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COFffitGHT DEPOSIT. 




BROTHER ESKIMO 





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The boys glanced at him constantly, then at each other. Did 
Sachinnie know? 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


BY 


ALAN SULLIVAN 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

GEORGE AVISON 



NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 
1921 



Copyright, 1921, by 
The Centuby Co. 


OCT -3 1921 


0/7 ^ 

PRINTED IN IT. S. A. 


g) Cl. A 6 2 7 a 1 6 




TO 

D’ARCY, BARRY, AND MICHAEL 










* 

«• 










































































LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


The boys glanced at him constantly, then at each 

other. Did Sachinnie know? . . Frontispiece 

PAOH 

TAOINQ 

The great bull raised his grizzled head and bellowed 

a furious challenge 24> 


“It is nearly done/’ said Sachinnie . . * .136 

And then there were found great arrow-heads of 
ducks and geese with the wisest and strongest 
bird at the front . ~ . • -- - * 220 

























BROTHER ESKIMO 




BROTHER ESKIMO 


CHAPTER I 

K ELEEPELES, whose name means in 
English “The Young Hunter,” lay on 
his back and stared up at the ceiling. It was 
not papered or plastered or painted like your 
ceiling; it was made of snow and curved over 
his head just like the inside of the shell which, 
if you are careful, you can lift off a hard- 
boiled egg. For Keleepeles was an Eskimo 
boy and lived in an igloo, — a dome-shaped 
hut built of ice and snow. 

Close beside him snuggled Cunayou, his 
brother, who was four years younger than 
he. He found it hard not to lose his temper 
rather often with Cunayou, for while the 
elder boy was very earnest and worked hard 
over his hunting and fishing, Cunayou used to 
lie about in a very provoking manner, and 
when scolded only stretched his wide mouth 

3 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


into an enormous and good-natured grin that 
made him look like the sea sculpin after which 
he was named. It is known in the Arctic 
Circle, where the brothers lived, that for his size 
the sea sculpin has a bigger mouth than any- 
thing which flies, creeps, walks, crawls, or 
swims. 

And while we are on the subject of names, 
it is without question that the small, brown 
folk of the North are very sensible in such mat- 
ters. Amongst people we both know, for in- 
stance, there may be two Percy Smiths and the 
only thing in which they are alike is their 
names. But if they lived in this northern 
land, where you and I are going to spend a 
year, one would probably be called “the boy 
with a face like a seal,” and the other “the boy 
who rolls when he walks.” That is the way 
of it. So if you are traveling across the ice 
and meet a man who has one leg shorter than 
the other, you just say something about his 
leg and that is his name. Or if another 
stranger has had his face clawed by a white 
bear you just mention how ugly he is and he 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


5 


will answer at once. It is all very simpie and 
easy and much better than a lot of Percys and 
Harolds whose names don’t mean anything at 
all. 

J ust as this moment Cunayou was snoring. 
He always snored when he was not grinning. 
It was not an ordinary twelve-year-old snore. 
Of course you know that snores have ages just 
like people, and after a little experience you 
can come pretty near guessing a person’s age 
by the way he snores. This was an insulting 
kind of thing that began with a saucy, soft, wet 
little gurgle, went on into something like a 
flute, and finished with a ptarmigan whistle. 
Keleepeles paid no attention to it. He had 
heard it for so long that he hardly heard it at 
all ; what seemed curious was that he heard no 
snore from his father, Aivick. He looked 
about the igloo. Neither his father nor his 
mother was there. 

Just a word more about snoring. Some 
people think that the principal thing about the 
Arctic Circle is the midnight sun. Others 
think about seals or polar bears or caribou, or 


6 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


reindeer getting fat before Christmas work be- 
gins, or gray geese, or black swans, or blue 
foxes. But if you want a real picture of the 
Arctic, just imagine little, white, egg-shell ig- 
loos scattered about on the plains of ice, and 
inside them small brown people, all lying on 
their backs and snoring while the wind whistles 
down from the north. 

Presently Keleepeles felt restless and got 
up. It was not necessary for him to dress. 
He was already completely dressed ; for in the 
best Eskimo families when you go to bed you 
don’t take anything off, but just put a few 
things over you, such as a caribou skin or two 
or three bearskins, or a walrus hide. And 
when he got up the bed-spring did not squeak, 
for he slept on a little shelf of snow close up 
against the curving roof. 

He stood for a moment staring at the hole 
in the floor in which the deep sea-water lay 
very green and quiet. This would be a com- 
fortable arrangement to have in one’s home, 
for if th© weather were bad outside you could 
lie in bed and fish; and you could decide for 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


7 


yourself whether you would sooner stretch out 
and read a boy’s magazine or roll over and 
watch a twenty-pound salmon thrashing a 
broad silver tail while it was being pulled 
straight up through the floor of your bedroom. 

Keleepeles stepped around the hole, care- 
fully avoiding the automatic contrivance which 
tilts up and makes a noise when there is a bite 
— for fishing goes on all the time — and went 
out. He didn’t go through the door, there 
being no door, but got down on his hands and 
knees and crawled along a narrow tunnel. 
Then he stood up, rubbed his eyes, and stared. 
He could not see much, for it was snowing 
hard, but he started for the igloos that the rest 
of the tribe had built, just a hundred yards 
away. Presently he came to a dead stop, for 
at his feet stretched a broad sheet of gray 
water into which a multitude of snowflakes 
settled in a mysterious silence. The village 
had disappeared. 

Now, it is very easy for a man or a child or 
a cat or a tame rabbit or even a circus ele- 
phant to get lost, and it frequently happens 


8 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


down our way, but in the North it is not people 
or animals but villages that go astray, and what 
had taken place this time was that the great 
ice-field on which Aivick’s igloo was built, near 
the others, had suddenly split in two. Part 
of it grounded in shallow water and stayed 
where it was, while the piece on which Kelee- 
peles and Cunayou slept was sailing away, 
driven before the storm in a strong current. 

He stood for a long time and thought hard. 
Aivick, and the boys’ mother, Allegoo, the 
Drinking Cup, were no doubt perfectly safe 
with friends, and probably at this moment were 
carving titbits from along the back of a square- 
flipper seal and chewing them with real content. 
That is another advantage of the North. You 
don’t telephone the butcher, who gets the steak 
from the packing-house and hands it to the de- 
livery man, who gives it to the cook, who turns 
it over on the stove and then turns it over to 
the housemaid, who puts it on the table, where 
your father turns a piece of it over to you. 
Nothing like that, at all. You kill a seal and 
eat it, with no bother about cooks, butchers, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


9 


housemaids, and stoves. The sea is the general 
shop where one goes for what one wants. So 
Keleepeles did n’t worry about his parents, but 
instead began to realize that now he must live 
by spear and line and put into practice all that 
Aivick had taught him, and that while he was 
still a boy of sixteen he must act as a man and 
do a man’s work, and, for a while at least, be 
both father and mother to the sculpin-mouthed 
youth who was still snoring in his own peculiar 
way. There was just one difficulty. The 
dogs had gone with Aivick. 

He walked slowly back to the igloo and after 
a moment’s hesitation sat squarely down on 
the sleeping form of his brother. The ptar- 
migan whistle broke off suddenly and Cunayou 
heaved himself up. 

“What is the matter? My bones are still 
full of sleep. Am I a cow walrus, that you 
sit on me?” 

“You are sick with sleep. I want to talk 
with you.” 

“Then talk, O wise one.” Cunayou knew 
how to be very impertinent. 


10 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“The village is lost,” said Keleepeles, slowly. 
“I tried to walk there, but came to deep water. 
We are alone — we sons of Aivick.” 

Cunayou sat up very straight. Presently 
he began to grin, — a wide, irrestible grin that 
seemed to spread to his ears. His oily, cop- 
per-colored face became covered with deep, 
soft wrinkles, his small, flat nose nearly disap- 
peared, and his lids were half closed, but 
through their narrow slits his bright, beady 
eyes shone like black stars. 

“Then for a time I shall do as I like,” he 
chuckled. 

“For a time you shall do as I like. Can you 
feed yourself like a seal pup? And when the 
white bear climbs on the roof of the igloo, what 
will you do then?” 

“Nothing, but you ’ll do it. Is not your 
name the Young Hunter? My stomach is 
cold and I would eat.” 

Keleepeles tossed him a slice of half -frozen 
salmon, but Cunayou shook his head. 

“It lies beneath my ribs like ice.” 

“The seal meat is lost with the yillage and I 


BROTHER ESKIMO 11 

cannot kill more in a storm. Be content.” 
But Cunayou had a discomforting vision. 
What if his brother should kill no seal? “Can 
we live, you and I?” he asked a little anxiously. 

“The wolverine is a robber and he lives, and 
the white fox is a coward, yet he grows fat. 
Shall we starve who are neither robbers or cow- 
ards? Snore again, my brother, as only you 
can snore, and when the storm clears you shall 
stuff your stomach.” 

Cunayou took comfort and soon the ptar- 
migan whistle sounded again,. Keleepeles 
squatted on the floor, thinking hard. He knew 
that he would never see that village again. By 
and by the great floe would recommence its 
journey and ultimately disappear through 
Baffin Straits. Aivick and the others would 
not be there. Somewhere along the shore a 
new village would be carved among the wind- 
whipped snow-banks, and in the long Arctic 
evening Allegoo would talk of her sons. 

In the North men are like small specks 
on a thousand-mile counterpane. Keleepeles 
knew this, but he knew also that sometime and 


12 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


somewhere he would see Aiviek’s kayak, or 
hunting boat, gliding over the green water, or 
catch sight of his tiny figure miles away on the 
flat ice. He drew a long breath and began to 
chew reflectively at the frozen salmon. But 
what should he do without the dogs? 

Keleepeles and all his tribe lived on the ice 
without fire and water; and when one can do 
this, one is not worried by the loss of a village. 
It was the season of the year when the square- 
flipper seal comes up to bask on the drifting 
floes; and to hunt the square-flipper Aivick 
and the rest tramped many a league behind 
their panting dogs. The week before, Kelee- 
peles had made his first kill, and now he sur- 
veyed his weapons and* the contents of the 
igloo with sudden and profound interest. 

On the floor were some skins of the coast 
caribou, and against the wall was skewered a 
piece of ice hacked from the house. Beneath it 
and a little to one side flickered an oil lamp 
made of a wisp of moss stuck in a small stone 
vessel filled with seal oil. Drop by drop the 
water fell into a small copper bowl hammered 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


13 


out by the Yellowknife Indians. Aivick in 
turn had hammered it out of the Yellowknives. 
The water was not to be drunk, but squirted 
from Aivick’s lips upon the runners of his 
sledge, next morning. 

Against the wall stood two spears, which 
were very precious, and with them a short, thick 
bow made of driftwood and a sheaf of stone- 
headed arrows. For the rest there were a 
piece of flint, two knives, a bundle of moss, 
some fragments of timber from a wreck in 
Coronation Gulf, a coil of rope made of walrus 
sinew, a bladder float, two sinew fishing-lines, 
four hooks of fish bone and two of carved ivory, 
a piece of flint and a handful of touchwood 
for lighting fires. Such were the worldly pos- 
sessions of Keleepeles, the son of Aivick and 
Allegoo. 

By these things Aivick had lived, and the 
mind of Keleepeles did not go beyond them. 
The boy had learned to bait a hook before or al- 
most as soon as he could walk, and when he was 
twelve he saw Aivick and Larquil the stout 
man kill a white bear with their spears, beside 


14 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


an ice hummock, while the dogs snapped at the 
big creature’s flanks. He knew the weather 
signs and though he had not come to full height 
he was very strong. Now he would just have 
to do by himself what previously he had done 
under Aivick’s eye. So he worried not at all, 
but crawled into the sleeping-bag beside Cuna- 
you with a queer little appeal to the Great 
Spirit, who keeps a friendly eye on all good 
Eskimo, that in the days to come he might 
prove himself a man. 

Do you begin to see him, — this short, broad- 
shouldered, flat-faced, black-eyed boy? He 
was honest, because in the far North the lives 
of men depend on the few things they possess, 
and to steal is to take away that upon which 
life depends. He was brave, because the cow- 
ard is likely to die soon under the midnight 
sun. He dreamed of hunting, because his 
days were destined to be one long hunt, and his 
standing would be reckoned by the flight of 
his harpoon and the thrust of his broad-bladed 
spear. He was wise, because while he thought 
slowly he acted like a flash, and though Ke- 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


15 


leepeles did not know it, but only did the things 
that he found to do in his wanderings, and did 
them bravely and without complaint, he was 
destined to become the wisest and strongest 
Eskimo between Coronation Gulf and Baffin 
Straits. 


CHAPTER II 


I T was toward the end of March that Aivick 
stayed behind with the village, while his 
house and his sons moved on. In the month of 
March the Arctic Eskimo notice that the days 
are getting a little longer. There are perhaps 
five hours of good light. The past five months 
have been partly spent under the shimmery 
curtain of the aurora. This is not the pale 
light that sometimes hangs in the winter sky 
of the country most of us live in, but a great 
sheet of violet and purple flame that half fills 
the heavens and quivers exactly as though 
some giant were shaking one edge of it till 
strange waves of color ripple through it from 
end to end. Keleepeles always watched the 
aurora very carefully, — though, of course, that 
is not what he called it, — because one could 
read the weather by its depth and changes. 
And for the rest of the time the light was some- 


BROTHER ESKIMO 17. 

thing like a gray dawn that got brighter if the 
skies were clear. 

The thing to remember about Keleepeles is 
that his family had a yearly program. It 
was n’t anything like yours. Instead of going 
where they wanted to, they went where they 
had to because the ice took them. 

It was a simple and practical and very cheap 
way of traveling. Instead of jamming things 
into an innovation trunk, they took the whole 
house with them, and saved all the packing. 
There were n'o tickets — and no dining-car, 
where they stood in the aisle and wondered 
why the other passengers ate so much and so 
slowly. The dining-car was just under the 
house. In fact, the house moved along on top 
of the dining-car, which was a mile or two deep. 
The rate of travel was slow and the climate 
did not alter, but one did not miss the train, 
and one knew in a very accurate way just where 
he was going. One’s friends and relations 
went along, too. This may not always be an 
advantage, for sometimes a fellow wants to get 
away to talk about his present friends to a set 


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BROTHER ESKIMO 


of entirely new ones, but, be that as it may, the 
whole arrangement has suited the Eskimo so 
well for a great number of years that they are 
not likely to change it. 

Now, as March was nearly over, the mind of 
Aivick the father of Keleepeles had been full 
of walrus-hunting, and if you have ever seen a 
walrus you will realize that it does not take 
many of them to fill one’s mind. So when 
Keleepeles woke up next morning, he crawled 
out of his sleeping-bag and fingered the two 
spears that stood against the wall. Presently 
he poked the butt end of one of them into the 
ribs of Cunayou. 

“Get up, brother; we have work to do.” 

Cunayou rubbed his eyes. “I have a great 
hunger. Go and kill something.” 

Keleepeles smiled. “I go, and you with 
me,” he said. ‘To-day we shall have fresh 
meat.” 

“What meat?” 

“A cow walrus. The flesh beside her ribs 
is very good.” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 19 

“Does the wolverine kill the whHe bear?” 
said Cunayou, his eyes very round. 

“Two wolverines, you and I, will kill to- 
day.” 

“But we are small and the walrus is big like 
the oomiak, the women’s boat.” 

Keleepeles chuckled. “His heart is not far 
under his skin.” 

“But he has tusks, and a beard. I like not 
his face when his mouth is open. Also, he 
roars like the grinding ice. My stomach is 
turned within me. I want no meat.” 

“I speak of a cow, not a bull,” said the 
elder boy, steadily. “I am the son of Aivick 
and not afraid. You too are his son. We 
shall do great things, you and I, and when 
again we see Allegoo, our mother, we shall be 
hunters and not children. Remember the tale 
of the great sickness that fell upon the tribe, 
and how Allegoo killed the white bear when -the 
men were too weak to hunt. She who was 
nursing you put you down so that she might 
fight. I watched from the mouth of the igloo, 


20 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


and saw the bear run upon her spear. She 
was not strong enough to hold it, so put the end 
in a crack in the ice and the other end went 
through the bear and stuck out of his back. 
Are you a girl child and do your knees knock 
together when you walk?” 

There was a long silence. Then Cunayou 
began to grin and his brother knew that the 
point was won. The grin widened and the 
boy’s mouth lengthened till its corners seemed 
to disappear at the back of his neck, while his 
white teeth gleamed like polished ivory. He 
was very fat, and, as Aivick always said, 
walked near the ground. And this is a great 
help to a hunter, though it comes a little hard 
in soft snow. 

“Give me a spear,” he said, smiling. 
“Where do we go?” 

“To the open water and follow it. We are 
not far from land.” 

They crawled out, and, before starting off, 
Keleepeles searched the horizon carefully. 
Another and larger ice-floe had come up in the 
night, and where it touched the one on 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


21 


which they stood it had thrust up a pressure 
ridge of tumbled blocks, several feet high. 
This stretched east and west, it seemed for 
miles, but Keleepeles, climbing to the top, 
thought he caught a glint of water far to the 
south, and just beyond it a bit of broken sky- 
line that looked like land. It was all a dead, 
glistening white, with that unbroken glare 
which eats hotly into a white man’s eyes and 
makes him blind. Keleepeles climbed down, 
fished in his pocket, and pulled out two pairs 
of the bone blinkers which the Eskimo use at 
a season of the year. Then, with their eyes 
shielded from the reflection of the plain, the 
boys struck south. 

It was not bad going, except for the ridges 
which are like long thick walls that have been 
overturned in great confusion. When ice- 
fields, driven by the tide, current or wind, meet, 
their edges crumble from enormous pressure, 
and these, turning upward, form great broken 
parapets that traverse the Arctic from end to 
end and from top to bottom. To Keleepeles, 
who understood them, they meant extra work 


22 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


and that was all. Here and there as the boys 
tramped southward were unexpected pools of 
m’otionless green water at which he looked con- 
tentedly and hurried on. It was a good omen 
for the future. At the end of two hours he 
dodged behind a spur of the ridge and beckoned 
excitedly to Cunayou, who toiled up, the sweat 
pouring from his round face. 

“Swallow your breath and do not speak; but 
look” 

The fat boy gulped and peeped, and as he 
peeped his bones turned to water and his stom- 
ach rolled over inside of him. Two hundred 
yards away was a patch of open water where 
the ice-field, driven east, had been thrust off 
shore by a low spur of polished rock. In its 
lee a tiny spot in the Arctic Ocean lay open to 
the sun. Cunayou’s eyes bulged as he stared, 
for on the smooth surface of the rock a herd 
of walrus lay basking in the sun. 

“Good hunting,” whispered Keleepeles. 

Cunayou gulped again but did not stir. 
Farthest from them a great bull raised his 
whiskered head, and the sun fell bright on his 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


23 


long downward-gleaming tusks. The coarse 
bristles about his mouth were wet, and the boy 
could see the big mouth open redly and the 
bull-like head tilt back, while the great crea- 
ture sent out a deep, hoarse, booming roar 
that made Cunayou’s knees knock together as 
though he were indeed a girl. Between the 
big bull and the water the rest were scattered 
lazily, — huge, sleek, shapeless masses with 
swollen glossy sides, strong, shiny flippers, and 
broad, silky backs. 

The younger boy drew a long and difficult 
breath. 

“How much does he weigh, — the lord of the 
herd?” 

“More than fifty Cunayous,” whispered his 
brother with brotherly comfort. “Would you 
like to kill him?” 

“Not this year; some other year,” came the 
trembling reply. “Why should the lord of 
the herd die at my hands?” 

Keleepeles chuckled. “Your stomach may 
be sick, but it is full of great mercy. Choose 
the one which is to die.” 


24 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou looked long and thoughtfully. 
“That calf near the water/’ he said after a 
pause. 

“He is too near safety and we should not 
have time ; also, we should be between the lord 
of the herd and the water. It is not well to 
stand between a bull walrus and the place 
where he would go.” 

A prickly feeling ran suddenly through the 
roots of Cunayou’s black hair, and just then he 
heard a friendly whisper: “It is not long 
since Allegoo carried you on her back and 
there is much to learn. The walrus has a 
great body but a small head. He thinks with 
his stomach and there is nothing to fear. His 
fat is very sweet. Were we in the kayaks 
which we shall build when the next moon 
comes, I should go hunt elsewhere, but here is 
meat for the taking. It is easy. Not far 
from the bull and nearly as far from the water 
behold that two-year cow. She is young 
and very tender. When we run suddenly at 
her, beware of the bull. Keep on one side and 
a little behind me. Now we shall kill.” 



The great bull raised his grizzled head and bellowed a furious 

challenge 
















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BROTHER ESKIMO 


25 


Very carefully Keleepeles climbed down 
from the ridge and worked along its northern 
side toward the shore, with his brother at his 
heels. When the cover ended there was but a 
hundred feet of clear ice between them and the 
drowsy herd. He paused for a moment, 
glanced over his shoulder to see if Cunayou was 
ready, then, sloping his spear, dashed out. On 
the instant the old bull saw him, and, lifting 
his mighty shoulders, sent out a hoarse note of 
alarm. Fear rippled through the herd and 
there began the lurching of huge, smooth 
bodies toward safety and the deep green 
water. 

“Come quickly,” panted Keleeples. “They 
move down hill and very fast. Run in at the 
side, after me.” 

In another second he had leaped upon 
the rock. The great bull halted, raised his 
grizzled head, and bellowed a furious challenge 
that turned Cunayou’s blood to water. He 
was very much frightened, but his brother 
heeded not. Jumping to one side, Keleepeles 
sprang toward the laboring cow. J ust at that 


26 BROTHER ESKIMO 

moment a stone turned beneath his foot and 
Cunayou saw him stagger. A sick feeling 
flooded over the younger boy, but, remember- 
ing orders, he made a thrust at the smaller ani- 
mal. Simultaneously the bull, answering the 
calls of the herd, flung himself toward the 
water. The next moment Keleepeles’s spear 
was darting in and out of the cow’s glossy side. 

Half an hour afterward Cunayou gave a 
long, contented sigh, stopped eating, and 
looked around. So far* as concerns the cow, it 
was not a pretty sight ; but, then, neither would 
it be if you got your steak straight from the 
animal instead of from the cook. Cunayou, 
however, was full of great contentment. 
Presently) Keleepelesi began to talk. 

“It was a good hunt and you did well, my 
brother, that you went straight for the cow as 
I told you. Walrus, having round heads, do 
not remember one thing long, for it is the 
animals with the flat heads that are wise and 
remember. He is strong in the sea but weak 
on the land.” 

Cunayou nodded. He was too full of 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


27 


walrus to be anything but lazy and grateful. 
“There is a lot of meat here, but how shall 
we take it home, having no dogs?” he yawned, 
a little sleepily. 

His brother’s eyes began to twinkle and 
he got up and pushed the butt of his spear 
several times into a snowbank that lay close 
beside the rock. 

“It is better to take our home to the meat. 
We will bring what is in our- igloo and build 
another one here. There are holes where the 
square-flippers will come for air and sun, and 
under these cliffs the she bear suckles her young 
beneath the snow. Next moon we shall be in 
our kayak, hunting with the harpoon, and then 
will come long days with much food. Is it 
well, little brother?” 

It all sounded so promising that of course 
Cunayou nodded at once and began to grin. 

“There is much that we shall see,” went on 
the other, happily, “when the winter has run 
away in water to the sea. The ducks and geese 
and eagles will come, and there will be many 
things along the shore. The caribou will run. 


28 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


very many of them, and the gray wolves will 
pull down the outcasts of the herd. The white 
foxes will feast on dead whales when the tide 
is low, and the old birds will teach their young 
just as I shall teach you, O snoring one, with 
a mouth like a water-hole.” 

Now, the reason that Keleepeles finished up 
with his somewhat insulting remark was that 
Cunayou, who was lying flat on his back on the 
bare rock, had fallen sound asleep. 


CHAPTER III 


T HEN came the last night the boys spent 
in the house of their father. Nearly 
every one down our way has moved at least 
once and knows just what a curious lost feeling 
one has when the furniture is standing in the 
street and the furniture man is scratching his 
head and wondering just how he is going to get 
the things into the van. There is something 
shocking and disgraceful about it. But this 
move was different. The old house would 
never be used again, and by and by would 
dissolve into the sea. It is true that the 
furniture was in the street, but the boys merely 
rolled it up into bundles and slung it on their 
backs by means of pack-straps that ran across 
their foreheads. There were the spears and 
knives and fishing-lines, but Keleepeles carried 
these in his hands, and when they arrived at 
the cow-walrus place there was only the simple 


so 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


matter of building a new house and the whole 
thing was finished. 

Now, it takes two skilled hunters working 
an hour to build an igloo that is fit to live in, 
and it took the boys a good deal longer. The 
snow must be just right and wind-packed not 
too hard, and the blocks must be cut with the 
proper thickness and taper, and the curve of 
the roof must be true, or the whole thing will 
collapse half-way up. 

The first three rounds were not so bad. 
Keleepeles stood inside and placed the blocks 
one by one as Cunayou, pressing them against 
his stomach, staggered up with load after load. 
Higher up the work got harder, and the last 
three courses, which are more and more 
horizontal, nearly broke the big boy’s heart. 
But the igloo grew, though it was not pretty, 
and the joints were uneven and the thickness 
of wall was irregular. 

And just here it might be well to say some- 
thing about igloos, — that is, if you really want 
to understand the boys’ method of life. 

To be civilized is to take the things of the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


31 


country and use them as intelligently as you 
know how. So ‘Keleepeles was, if you think 
about it, really a civilized person. He knew, 
for instance, that the walls of an igloo must 
not be too thick when the weather is mild or too 
thin when it is very cold; that the entrance 
tunnel must face down wind, and that it is a 
labor-saving plan to cut the first course or two 
of blocks out of the floor. It is the habit of 
the white bear sometimes to climb on top of 
an igloo in search of food in a season of storm, 
so the roof must be strong enough to carry 
him; and if an igloo is properly built, the key 
block, the last to go in at the very crown of 
the arch, should bind with every one of the 
previous course. 

So with all this and a good deal more in their 
minds the boys toiled for three hours, till 
Keleepeles cut his way out through the bottom 
course ; for, naturally, he had built himself in. 
Completing the entrance, he sat down and be- 
gan to chew thoughtfully at a long strip of 
walrus that dangled jerkily from his strong 
jaws. 


32 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


At midnight he woke with a start. Cunayou 
beside him was snoring vigorously, and in the 
dark he could just make out the white wall 
around him. He felt all at once very wide 
awake, for it is the gift of the born hunter to be 
able to sleep undisturbed through sounds that 
are natural, but to wake up with every instinct 
tremendously alive at any unusual noise, how- 
ever slight. It is just as though some tiny 
sentinel were on guard at his ear, ready to 
send in a swift warning whenever necessary. 
And what Keleepeles heard in between the 
snores of Cunayou was a dull, short cough, 
like a grunt, close beside the igloo. 

He lay for a moment, his heart pumping 
rapidly, then slipped to the floor. Glancing 
back at Cunayou’s gently heaving form, he 
shook his head, reached for a spear, and on 
hands and knees moved noiselessly to the 
entrance. Peering out, he became suddenly 
rigid, for in the half-light was the rounded 
back of a white bear that lay muzzling into the 
fat sides of the cow walrus. 

The boy’s eyes rounded and he felt for the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


33 


first time very much alone. The moon shone 
a little clearer. He could see that it was a 
she bear, very large and very thin, so thin 
that her backbone stood out sharp in a ridge. 
Her skin was a dirty yellow white, and when 
she lifted her lean, arrow-shaped head he 
caught the gleam of small, bright, pink eyes. 
Close at her side was a cub, fatter than its 
mother, playing with fragments of flesh it had 
worried from the great mass in front of it. 
Keleepeles drew a long breath and understood. 

He knew that it is the custom of the she bear 
to desert her mate when early winter stiffens 
the Arctic, and seek a cave as shelter, where 
shortly the snow will drift over and hide her 
from sight. Here in darkness and silence she 
bears her young, nursing him through the 
long hard months when Unorri, the north 
wind, whistles across the ice, and the aurora 
hangs in purple flame from the zenith. 
It is a strange season. During four months 
she eats not at all, for there is nothing to eat, 
but weaves her slow paces up and down her 
few yards of freedom. In January the cub 


34 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


comes, like a small Arctic Newfoundland dog 
with tiny, sharp claws and eye-teeth, and till 
March she suckles it, while her own great frame 
grows daily more gaunt and bony. Then 
when the sun is warmer she issues forth, mad 
with weakness and a great hunger. 

Very cautiously the boy crawled back and 
put his mouth to Cunayou’s ear. “Wake up, 
little brother; there is much to see.” 

Cunayou grunted, yawned noisily and 
stretched. “I was eating a calf walrus in my 
sleep. It was full of oil. What is it?” 

He was toAd in a whisper. “Come and 
look,” repeated Keleepeles. 

“My stomach is warm where I lie,” pro- 
tested the fat youth, “but it will grow cold with 
fear if I look. You shall behold it for both of 
us.” 

“And tell Aivick and Allegoo that you are 
a girl and not a man child?” 

“I had sooner be a girl and stay where I 
am, and be safe.” 

“Then I go alone,” said his brother, gently, 
and moved off without a sound. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 35 

A moment later he felt a touch on his shoul- 
der. “Look/’ breathed Cunayou. “There 
are many bears.” 

Keleepeles looked, and, shambling across 
the ice toward the igloo, came a great beast, 
His fur was like silk, and shimmered in the 
moonlight. He came at a long, slouching 
trot, his head low down, his big black-clawed 
paws falling like soft pads on the smooth ice. 
It was a curious shuffling gait, but it carried 
him fast, and the boys heard his claws scratch 
the polished rock as he sought foothold. In 
another moment he was beside the others. 

Down our way if a family has been separated 
all winter they often meet at table in the 
springtime. This is what happens, in the 
Arctic also, but there are no greetings at all. 
The new-comer merely glanced at the cub; 
who was perhaps his son, and began to eat, 
and the she bear merely glanced at the new- 
comer, who might have been her husband, and 
went on eating. All husbands looked alike to 
her. She had a new one every winter, and 
after a few years it was hard to remember them 


36 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


apart; and, besides, if you have not tasted food 
for four months you are likely to overlook 
your manners. In the next few minutes she 
began to bulge. 

Cunayou was fascinated and Keleepeles so 
motionless that his brother began to think he 
had gone to sleep. Cunayou’ s stomach felt 
very cold, and his teeth began to chatter softly. 

“Do we kill now?” he whispered. 

Keleepeles chuckled, without any noise, far 
down in his throat. “We are not fools, you 
and I. It is in my mind that something else 
will happen. Watch and see .” 

And in an hour it happened. The bears, 
full of meat to the muzzle, waddled off, and the 
moon shone on the mangled carcass of the cow 
walrus, till from far off came a sound that gave 
Cunayou the prickly feeling to which he was 
getting accustomed. 

“Look,” said Keleepeles, and pointed south, 
where the white hills came down to the ice. 

A shadow drifted across them, swiftly and 
silently, and then another, while four gray 


BROTHER ESKIMO 87 

wolves slunk down the long slope, drawn by 
the smell of meat. 

“Be very quiet,” warned Keleepeles. “They 
are too’many for us.” 

Now, there is something about a white bear 
that one can like, but nothing about a gray 
wolf, which seems born for murder and cruelty. 

“They are evil spirits, and not wolves,” 
chattered Cunayou, sick with fear. 

“Yes, for in them are the spirits of evil men 
and women, and a she wolf leads them. See 
how their eyes are gray and yellow, and their 
ears have black tips. Their skulls are flat, 
and therefore they are very wise. They rim 
with their noses down, to hold the smell of that 
which they pursue. You have said a true 
word: they are not animals but devils. They 
hunt the caribou, and if the great spirit had 
not robbed the feet of the cow caribou of smell 
in a season of the year, there would not be any 
young ones. See, — what they eat not they 
destroy.” 

Gradually the hunger of the pack was 


38 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


appeased. The long black noses ceased to 
buiy themselves and the gray-white shoulders 
stopped hunching as the brutes tugged at the 
red flesh. Then began a savage play in which 
the curving fangs tore and threw aside great 
strips of meat and hide. It was exactly as 
though the pack were trying to foul that which 
they could not eat. In a little while the cow 
walrus was a shapeless heap, her ribs project- 
ing and bare. Presently one wolf, the tallest 
of them all, put her nose into the wind and 
stood motionless. The others watched her, 
till, with a deep-throated whimper, she started 
back up the snow-covered slope toward the 
low ridge that lay southward. The others 
went in single file after her, gray and silent, 
the terrors of the North, the enemy of all that 
walk and run. 

Keleepeles drew a long breath. “ Sleep 
now, little brother,” he said. “You have seen 
much, and it will soon be day, when we go to 
hunt the square-flipper seal.” 


CHAPTER IV 


I T seemed to Cunayou next morning as he 
stood in the sunlight that a bad dream 
mingled with strange sounds and growls had 
passed, and that the world was now rather nice. 
At twelve years of age a fellow is conscious, 
even if he has a brown skin and lives in the Arc- 
tic Circle, that there is a good deal about which 
he does not know very much, and it is the thing 
about which one is ignorant that is most 
alarming. But now he drew a long breath 
and felt curiously and unexpectedly happy. 
Keleepeles was, he decided, wise as well as 
brave, but it is a question if the elder boy 
realized what an impression had been made on 
Cunayou’s childish brain by the events of the 
past night. Presently Keleepeles began to 
smile. 

“What does one take for hunting the square- 
flipper?” 


40 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou puckered his broad lips and 
thought hard. It was nine months since he 
had seen Aivick gather his gear for this 
purpose. 

“The spear with the head that comes off, 
and the line, and the knife, — and — and — I 
forget.” 

“The skin to sit on and the fur socks for 
one’s feet.” 

They struck out very cheerfully and soon 
the igloo blended in with its background of 
snow. The day was fine and already signs of 
spring were manifest. The skies seemed a 
little nearer and the horizon had a softened 
glint that was very comforting. To any one of 
us it would have seemed a strange thing that 
this wilderness of ice could yield food and even 
a sort of comfort, but to the young Eskimo 
the day was full of promise. To hunt as they 
hunted it was necessary to think and almost 
to act like the animals they pursued. In- 
finite patience, the ability to be motionless 
for hours, a knowledge of wind and weather, a 
keen eye and a quick, steady arm, — without 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


41 


these they would soon have starved. To kill 
an animal at two hundred yards with a high- 
powered rifle is not difficult, but to beat 
that animal at his own game and with home- 
made weapons is quite another story. 

And just here is a good place to say some- 
thing more about hunting. Decent men, after 
they have learned what kind of lives most wild 
things live, generally cease to desire to kill. 
A dead deer at a fellow’s feet is not so thrilling 
as the same deer was when he sailed like a bird 
through the woods. To watch a lynx while 
he himself is hunting means a revelation in 
woodcraft, and to see a cow moose teaching her 
calf to swim is to see something very tender 
and beautiful. 

Keleepeles, for instance, never in all his 
pilgrimages killed unless he wanted meat ; and 
it is safe to say that the man who needlessly 
butchers wild creatures, and boasts about the 
size of his bag, knows nothing about the history 
or habits of his victims, 

If you examine a map of the far North 
you will see that Foxland lies just beyond 


42 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Hudson Strait. The latter is the great outlet 
for the southern Arctic. West of Foxland 
is Fox Channel, and west of that again is 
Melville Peninsula, and still farther north- 
west stretches Boothia Gulf. These have 
been known points for many years. The 
general trend of the Arctic currents is toward 
Baffin Bay. 

Keleepeles had no clear understanding of 
the geography of the North, for Aivick’s 
wanderings had not covered more than two 
hundred miles of land and ice in all the boy’s 
life, but he remembered very distinctly that 
one day three Yellowknife Indians had ap- 
peared on the shore of the Melville Peninsula, 
where Aivick was camped, with copper arrow- 
heads, and a bundle of the inside bark of the 
red willow, which they called kinickinic and 
smoked with great contentment, and ever 
since then the boy had been full of wonder as 
to what lay to the south of his father’s yearly 
route. So this morning, when, before start- 
ing for the hunt, Cunayou asked him if he 
knew where they were, he scrawled a rough 


BROTHER ESKIMO 43 

outline on the inside of a caribou skin and 
laid a brown finger on what was meant for 
the east side of Melville Peninsula. With 
great positiveness he said: 

“We are near this point. Aivick and 
Allegoo have without doubt moved on to the 
big waters” (he meant Fox Channel), “but if 
we wait till the water opens along the shore 
and travel south, we shall find much game and 
see many things. Soon we shall get wood 
for kayaks and paddles, and then life will be 
very good. Is it well, fat one?” 

Cunayou grinned in his own particular way 
and the boys set out. The sun was strong and 
the ice smooth, with nothing on the horizon but 
the tumbled backs of pressure ridges that 
glinted in unending confusion. Presently 
Keleepeles pointed to the breathing-hole that 
lay just ahead. 

In five minutes the bigger boy was seated 
on a block of snow two feet from the edge of 
the hole. In front of him were two small rests, 
cut also from the snow, across which his spear 
lay ready. His feet were thrust into large, 


44 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


loose fur socks, and a coiled line lay by his side, 
one end of it made fast to the sharp head of 
the spear. Cunayou, sprawled behind him, 
drew a long breath and waited. 

An hour went by and nothing happened. 
Cunayou began to move restlessly, but 
stiffened at every reproving glance from his 
brother’s dark eyes. Keleepeles was bending 
forward, arms crossed and elbows on knees, 
staring intently into the breathing-hole, where 
the water heaved at intervals as though from 
wind pressure on the ice, till, quite suddenly, 
he pointed. 

In the transparent green depths a single 
bubble was rising, — a round, small thing that 
looked like a moonstone floating in a melted 
emerald. Keleepeles tightened his lips and 
reached for his spear. This was the square- 
flipper’s signal that he was coming up for air. 
The young hunter drew back a little and stood 
rigid, the spear in his lifted arm. His muscles 
were tense and his eyes shone. Cunayou held 
his breath and waited. 

Then, as though by magic, there was framed 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


45 


in the breathing-hole the head and sleek 
shoulders of the seal. He seemed to appear 
very mysteriously, and the younger boy had 
a glimpse of round, soft, bulging eyes, stiff 
bristles, black expanded nostrils. It was all 
as though some queer spirit were rising up out 
of the sea to find out what manner of thing it 
was that walked about on the great roof of 
ice. Just in that instant the seal caught sight 
of Keleepeles and in another second would 
have vanished, when the boy’s right arm stif- 
fened and the spear went home. 

It flew straight and made almost no splash. 
Simultaneously the head of it, which imbedded 
itself in the square-flipper, became detached 
from the shaft just as it was meant to, and the 
line went singing into the green depths. 
Keleepeles dropped on the remaining coils and 
held fast. 

“Help me, little brother. He is very 
strong,” he panted. 

Cunayou jumped to the rescue. It was a 
curious thing to feel their dinner battling in 
the ocean below, but he stuck out his jaw 


46 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


and held fast. Presently the line was pulled 
slowly in, and it took their united strength to 
get their quarry up upon the ice. He was a 
young bull, and very fat. 

A little later Cunayou leaned back. He 
was very full and very happy, and he surveyed 
Keleepeles with an additional and comfortable 
respect. This brother of his was a wonder. 

“We are the enemies of the square-flipper, 
but what others are there?” he demanded. 

“The white bear,” said Keleepeles, thought- 
fully. 

“But the white bear has no spear.” 

“It has that which is as good. He will lie 
beside the air-hole, veiy still, for many hours, 
and cover the blackness of his nose in the 
whiteness of his paws. Perhaps for a day he 
will wait and not move, if he is very hungry. 
Then, when the seal has lifted himself upon 
the ice, the bear will jump and strike him on 
the head very quickly.” 

“And the she bear?” 

“In the summer she goes out on the ice 


BROTHER ESKIMO 47 

with her cubs and follows her lord. For a 
year she suckles her young, and teaches them 
to hunt and to swim, taking them on her back 
in the water, and, yes, under the water.” 

The eyes of Cunayou widened. “Why 
under the water?” 

“If by chance she is pursued by hunters.” 

“Then there is much wisdom in a bear.” 

“When bears are young they drink through 
their paws, and the hairs between their toes 
keep the beetles out of their throats. Once 
Aivick told me that out at sea in his kayak 
he found a bear asleep, floating in the water 
on his side with a forearm under his head. 
He had been hunting whale.” 

Cunayou sat up very straight. “My broth- 
er has a long tongue.” 

“And mine has an empty head, so I am 
trying to fill it. The white bear can swim 
like a fish, and in the water gallops with his 
front legs and walks very fast with his hind 
legs, and he can stay under a very long time. 
He strikes at the whale with his claws, so that 


48 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


by and by the whale is killed, and comes to the 
shore and there is much food for many animals. 
But the bear eats first!” 

Cunayou drew a long breath. His brother 
was speaking very simply and earnestly, and it 
was quite evident that he knew what he was 
talking about. The small boy had heard talk 
of this kind between Aivick and other men dur- 
ing the past year, but had not paid any atten- 
tion to it. Now the whole subject seemed 
marvelous and very important. 

“And we shall see this, you and I?” he said, 
a little breathlessly. 

Keleepeles nodded. “We shall see more. 
Aivick told me last moon about the Yellow- 
knives who trade in copper. They are red 
men — not brown — and are like dogs. To the 
south, I do not know how far, is the bay where 
is the copper, and on the way there will be tim- 
ber along the shore for kayaks and sledges.” 

“Tell me more. Speak very quickly.” 

“And there run the coast caribou like flies, 
and white foxes like stones at the water’s edge. 
There are also many birds, great and small, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


49 


and the black swans in a season of the year are 
naked of feathers. There is too much to tell 
you, little brother, but not too much to see. ,, 

Keleepeles spoke gravely. He felt within 
him a strange stirring, a deep desire to make 
this year one great pilgrimage. He feared 
nothing in the wilderness and had a curious 
confidence, — which even he himself could not 
understand, — that he would be able to win 
through. He looked at Cunayou and pon- 
dered whether this smiling fat boy could ac- 
company him uncomplaining, then decided 
that such a trip would be just what Cunayou 
needed. Allegoo had always spoiled her 
younger son. So, with all this in his mind, he 
looked his brother straight in the eye. 

“What is the first duty of the small person 
who is learning how to hunt?” he demanded. 

“I — I don’t know.” 

“It is to obey. Sometimes that will seem 
very foolish, but it is because your brain, being 
not yet heavy, rattles about in your head. 
An*d the second?” 

“I don’t know,” stammered Cunayou. 


50 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“To speak but little, and not to complain. 
Can you do these things? For, though too 
fat, you are not a coward.” 

‘T 11 try.” The round-faced boy spoke 
very soberly. 

“Then we shall make a great journey. It 
will take many moons, and without doubt we 
shall look at death very close, but wisdom will 
follow, and there is no Eskimo on the water 
who will know what we know. But it will be a 
hard journey without dogs.” 

Cunayou stared at him, and his mouth 
opened and his eyes half closed -as though he 
were deep in some sudden thought. “But it 
may be, my brother, we shall have dogs.” 

“We cannot put harness on the dogs of a 
dream,” smiled Keleerpeles. “Last night you 
were calling to them in your sleep. What is 
it?” 

“I cannot tell you; perhaps my mind is sick 
— and,” added the fat boy with a grin, “I am 
already learning to speak but little.” 


CHAPTER V 


T O any eyes except those of an Eskimo the 
easterly shore of the Melville Peninsula 
would have been a forbidding scene. In these 
high latitudes the earth is very -naked and her 
bones project through her skin. Whipped all 
winter by the keen winds of the Arctic, and 
smitten by intense frost, it seems that it is hard 
even for the solid land to survive. And when 
the snows begin to go, and the smooth outline of 
the land is roughened by projecting ridges, 
there is presented a great expanse of bare rock 
patched here and there with caribou moss and 
small lakes of shining water, where the salmon 
spawn and numberless winged things live in 
peace and safety; and it was one day in April, 
when they came in off the ice to the shore of the 
peninsula that Cunayou made the great dis- 
covery which was to insure the success of the 
journey before them. 


51 


52 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


He was walking slowly along the rocks, 
very much alone, and feeling very much a man, 
when there sounded the sigh of great wings, 
and an Arctic eagle floated lazily over his head. 
Cunayou’s heart gave a throb, for the Arctic 
eagle comes to the far North, the first adven- 
turer of spring, three weeks ahead of all the 
feathered population. The boy noted the 
sturdy curved beak, the snowy crested head, 
the black talons doubled close up under the 
smooth ’body and the wide sweep of the blue- 
black pinions. The eagle was hunting, and 
Cunayou held his breath and waited. 

Came a sudden throb of the ’motionless 
wings, and the big bird hung poised over a 
crevice in the glistening rocks. All in a sec- 
ond he dropped like a bullet, and there reached 
Cunayou a small, sharp yelping and the hoarse 
scream of the lord of the upper air, and at that, 
trailing his spear, the boy ran for the spot with 
all the speed he could get out of his round fat 
legs. A moment later he was watching the 
best rough-and-tumble fight it is possible to 
imagine. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


53 


The eagle was having the time of his life 
with four wolf cubs. They were small and 
had woolly hair, and looked something like 
young Airedales, except that their noses were 
sharper and their tiny ears were very pointed. 
Their den lay in a narrow place into which the 
eagle had darted, and now, with a cub in his 
talons, he was making desperate efforts to rise. 

But he had stirred up a hornets’ nest. The 
cub in his claws, though its soft fur was stained 
with blood, twisted like a piece of rubber and 
bit savagely at its enemy’s thighs, while its 
brothers, their mouths full of feathers, waged 
bitter warfare each on its own chosen point of 
attack. There was a quick yelping as the 
eagle made desperate lunges with his curving 
beak at the infuriated pups, which were fight- 
ing as a pack fights, and, very literally, for 
their lives. Gradually the unequal combat 
drew to a close. Two wolves crawled off, lick- 
ing their bloody legs, a third lay panting on its 
side, and the eagle with a scream of triumph 
shook his wings free while his claws sank deeper 
in his helpless victim. And just then the spear 


54 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


of Cunayou swung whistling through the air. 
An hour later Keleepeles, coming across the 
ice from the south, saw a strange sight. A 
quarter of a mile away, Cunayou was stagger- 
ing toward the igloo, dragging what seemed to 
be a seal but which his brother knew instantly 
was not a seal. Its size and shape were w T rong. 
The small boy drew nearer, his face shiny with 
sweat, but his eyes bright with triumph, and 
from the big bundle was heard a muffled sound 
of yelps and squeals. And the bundle 
changed its form in the most astonishing man- 
ner possible. So Keleepeles waited till Cuna- 
you came up, and, slacking his tow-line, 
dropped on his stomach in utter exhaustion. 

Now, it is the mark of a good hunter that he 
is slow of speech and is willing that another 
man should speak first ; so Keleepeles, although 
greatly puzzled, sat still, with his eye on the 
heaving bundle, till, after a few moments, 
Cunayou began to breathe more easily, and sat 
up, and the first thing he did was to grin. 

“You told a. true tale, my brother, when you 
said we Should see strange things. I have 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


55 


some here in a bundle. It has been heavy in 
my stomach that we are without dogs, for we 
love one another, the dogs and I.” 

Keleepeles stuck out his lips. It was true 
that Cunayou understood dogs, for even when 
a very small child he would waddle out and pull 
the tail of the old bitch who was the leader of 
Aivick’s team, a thing which Aivick himself 
did not care to do ; and he never had been bitten 
or even scratched, and as in the North there is 
a good reason for most things, — which is not 
the case down our way, — Keleepeles did not 
laugh, but waited as quietly as a dead seal. 

“It has pricked in my throat like a fish bone,” 
went on Cunayou, very earnestly, “that we 
have no dogs. To-day, when alone, I saw an 
eagle hunting young wolves. I crawled up 
and looked over the rock and my tongue 
swelled because of fear that the wolf mother 
would come back and find me. Then, at the 
proper time, I killed the eagle, and ran away 
quickly to the igloo for my sleeping-bag, into 
which I have pushed the cubs. They are sick 
with fighting and are very bloody. So now, 


56 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Keleepeles, even though my brain is light and 
rattles about in my head, I would teach them 
as you teach me. There is nothing so hard 
that I will not do it. Is it not true that the 
dogs of Aivick are brother and sister to the 
wolves ? Let me try, O wise one, and when the 
ice tightens and we go back to find our father, 
we shall go with dogs and not like worthless 
ones whose weight is always on their feet; and 
then perhaps there will be found for me a bet- 
ter name than the Sculpin.” 

This was a long speech for Cunayou, the 
longest he had ever made; and Keleepeles, lis- 
tening very quietly, realized that his brother 
had never before in all his life been so much in 
earnest. And as some men are best at build- 
ing igloos and others at hunting, or carving 
on ivory, or whatever it may be, it was quite 
evident that this boy with the pleading eyes 
was destined to be a good man with dogs. So, 
though Keleepeles anticipated trouble, he only 
podded very gravely, whereat Cunayou’s 
heart leaped within him and he was full of a 
great joy. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


57 


It was an hour later that the elder boy 
wrinkled his brow suddenly. 

“Is there not something you have hot told 
me?” he asked. 

“What?” said Cunayou, puzzled. 

“About the mother of the pups.” 

“What is there to tell? I did not see her.” 

“No, but it may be that from a long way off 
she saw you. It is not the custom of the she 
wolf to part with her pups, and I have it in my 
mind that she will come for them.” 

“Oh,” grunted Cunayou, “and what then?” 

“It is better that we go to her; if not, there 
will be little sleep. Let us put her family into 
the igloo and go at*once.” 

The snarling bundle was dragged to the 
opening through the snow wall and emptied 
inward. Came a medley of sound, then the 
hole was stopped and the two struck out, 
Cunayou in the lead. When they came to the 
den his brother examined it with the greatest 
care. 

“The dog wolf himself has deserted the 
mother, for there are no signs of his lair,” he 


58 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


said presently, and pulled a feather from the 
dead eagle’s wing. “Let us climb up. She 
may still be here. If we find her and she 
jumps on me, look not at all at me but only at 
her, and strike very quickly. Her teeth are 
long and my throat is soft.” 

On top of the cliffs, a little out of breath, 
they peered west over the bare and shining 
tundra. There was no sound save of the wind 
and on the glistening surface there seemed to 
be neither motion nor life. It was very cold, 
and it struck Cunayou that to live on these 
bleak plains was not to he compared to living 
on the ice where there was found everything 
for comfort and health. 

“I do not understand,” said Keleepeles, 
after a long, searching stare. “Not at any 
time will a she wolf leave her pups, and even 
now she is not far away.” 

He stood for a long time quite motionless, 
his quick eyes roving from side to side. Fi- 
nally he shook his head as though greatly puz- 
zled and started back with Cunayou, now a 
little nervous, at his heels. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


59 


That night when the cliffs cast black shad- 
ows on the ice Keleepeles sat up wide awake 
and touched his brother on the shoulder, “I 
was right after all, — listen!’’ 

From the bare hills came a voice that drifted 
into the igloo and roused the sleeping pups 
coiled in round balls of fur on the floor. 
Clear and terrible it came, — the voice of the 
gray wolf, mad with the loss of her young. 
The pups lifted their sharp noses and whined 
understanding^, while Cunayou shivered in 
his skin sleeping-bag. There was fury in the 
howl, and a wild desire for her young, and a 
note of grim revenge that waited the robbers. 
Keleepeles, as he listened, could picture the 
tall, lean form trotting up and down the naked 
shores, pausing now and then to lift its black 
muzzle and send its cry through the night 
winds. 

The next night it came again, and the next; 
but the pups were safe inside, and on the fourth 
night it did not come at all. 

“She has gone away.” whispered Cunayou, 
thoughtfully, after listening a long time. 


60 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“Perhaps. I do not know. The wolf has 
a flat skull.” 

But little did either of them dream where or 
in what strange manner she would come back 
again to her young. 

To describe Cunayou’s labors for the next 
month would be really describing the manner 
in which he said good-by to the things of child- 
hood and became a very useful person. It was 
in his mind all the time that Keleepeles was 
right in saying that patience was a valuable 
thing. It seemed at the outset that his task 
was hopeless. In the first place the cubs had 
a natural fear of the smell of man, and when- 
ever the boy came near, their ears tilted back 
and the black lips lifted, showing the small, 
sharp teeth beneath. Cunayou kept them in 
a little snow pen, which had no roof, but whose 
walls were too high to jump. Their food was 
seal fat and fish, for the fishing was now good. 

Within the next fortnight Keleepeles built 
a sledge out of a good find of driftwood, the 
joints being all neatly dovetailed and lashed 
with sinew, as there were of course neither 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


61 


nails nor hammer. It sounds very simple, but 
it is n’t, and there is nowhere anything built 
of iron or of steel which has to withstand such 
rough handling as an Eskimo sledge, especially 
in the season of the year when the ice is dis- 
torted with pressure ridges and the heavily 
loaded runners drop first on one end and then 
on another. 

It was the carefully thought out plan of 
Keleepeles to leave his brother alone to his 
work of training; and though Cunayou nearly 
went crazy, he never complained. The pups 
soon got strong in the legs, and he made wal- 
rus-hide collars with a strap on top so that their 
growing necks would not be pinched. With 
two pups tugging at each arm he took them 
for miles across the ice, where now and again 
they would stop dead and sniff at the wind with 
their sharp, wrinkling black noses, every nerve 
keenly alive. Soon they got used to the smell 
of their master and Cunayou was feeling vastly 
encouraged, when one day he harnessed the 
four to the sledge and flicked the long lash 
of his whip over their gray backs. And then 


62 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


something happened. The pups plunged at 
their single traces, each pulling a different 
way, and the next moment had fallen upon 
one another, their ears back, the long hair on 
their shoulders bristling savagely. Followed 
a sort of Chinese puzzle of wolves, traces, 
sledge, whip, and boy, out of which Cunayou 
at length emerged, his face hot with anger. 

Keleepeles, who had been watching him, said 
not a word as Cunayou sent the long lash out 
with stinging force and seemed to have been 
transformed with fury and disappointment. 
Suddenly the boy stiffened, and, without 
glancing at his motionless brother, stared at 
the snapping heap of fur thoughtfully. Then 
he too sat down and waited. The battle went 
on till, gradually, the victor emerged, a lean, 
young she wolf with a torn ear, a dripping 
flank, and a patch of white fur on her shoulder. 
She bit savagely once or twice, — quick family 
bites that reached home each time, — then the 
yelping died out and with a defiant glance 
to which none of her relations responded she 
curled up on the ice and began to lick a bleed- 




63 


ing leg. At that Cunayou heaved a sigh of 
content, and for the first time in twenty 
minutes glanced at his brother. 

“Behold, the leader of our team, — that she 
wolf,” he said, smiling. 


CHAPTER VI 


T HERE is nothing more wonderful or 
beautiful than the coming of spring to 
the far North. It is as though the earth, stiff 
with the intense frost of many months and now 
feeling a thrill creeping through her ancient 
bones, began to stretch herself luxuriously and 
yield to the soft touch of the south wind. Her 
old ribs begin to appear, black and shiny and 
polished smooth with the passage of forgotten 
glaciers that moved down thousands of feet 
from still farther north. And with the south 
wind and the rains come the first feathered 
voyagers from more sunny lands. 

First of them all there are the eagles, lonely 
and high, their hooded eyes searching the plain 
for prey. Then, as though by magic, come 
clouds of snowbirds with black and white 
bodies and alabaster wings, that seem to have 
arrived in thousands. The eagles sweep on 

64 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


65 


to the Arctic Ocean, but the snowbirds stay. 
And after them the rooks and the first of the 
big Canadian geese, and leading battalions of 
large, strong-pinioned ducks. And after the 
ducks there is a break in the procession for a 
week or so, while the weather becomes more 
settled, till, with the next good south wind the 
general immigration is in full flood. Smaller 
geese and waveys (the white geese) and cranes 
that strike booming along the shore, teal and 
bluebills with their marvelous colors, loons 
that wake the echoes with weird laughter, 
plover and a host of water-birds, all these 
drop down from the skies! And as though 
the cycle of the North had still more secrets to 
unfold, there comes another lull and then still 
warmer weather that brings the wrens and 
finches and crossbeaks, and, most wonderful, 
the swans, black and white and blue, whose 
single flight may be a thousand miles and 
whose winter home is the Caribbean Sea or 
the hidden lakes of Venezuela. 

Week by week the weather softens. The 
days grow longer and the barren lands become 


66 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


the most populous with! wild things in all the 
continent. The caribou move north before the 
icy covering of the lakes is too weak to carry 
them. There is a clicking of hoofs and a 
rattling of antlers, and the great herds are 
like shaggy, gray-brown blankets that undu- 
late in long waves over the plain. The fresh- 
water lakes, and they are all of fresh water, 
swarm with fish, — trout, herring, codfish, 
whitefish, suckers, perch, crawfish, clams, peri- 
winkles, leeches, eels and minnows. To their 
shores the birds fly wearily at the end of the 
marvelous journey, and seek secluded places 
where they may breed, for in a season of the 
year when the old feathers have dropped and 
before the new ones are fully grown, they 
cannot fly, but waddle helplessly, the prey of 
the fox and wolf and the wolverine and the 
slim-bodied mink. 

Cunayou watched and wondered. At night 
he lay out on the ice and stared at the stars 
which now seemed large and soft, and listened 
for the howl of the mother of his team. But 
he did not hear it. By this time the pups were 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


67 


fairly well trained. Long in leg and body, 
they could not pull like a good sledge dog, but 
they were ridding themselves gradually of bad 
habits. They did not now eat their harness, 
a favorite pastime of the first weeks of cap- 
tivity; and one which kept Cunayou toiling 
over strips of walrus hide and a sharp bone 
skewer. The young female had achieved a 
complete mastery over the others that was 
never disputed. When she worked they 
worked, and when she was sulky the others 
displayed the worst of tempers. There were 
times when their noses puckered with faint, 
strange smells that drifted out from the land, 
which the boys could not distinguish, and made 
the pups whine as though they had received 
some wild message from afar. But Cunayou 
slaved over them as if he loved them, which 
indeed he did; and Keleepeles, who saw most 
things but said little, nodded contentedly and 
was satisfied. The thing was, — and this made 
him content, — that the pups had never known 
hunger or cruelty, for these work like poison 
in the blood of both men and animals. Then 


68 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


on a long-remembered day the mother of the 
young wolves came to her own. 

Cunayou was driving them and he felt very 
proud of their performance. They looked 
much like any other team, except that they 
were perfectly matched, and instead of curling 
their tails over their backs carried them 
straight out. Keleepeles was trotting behind, 
when suddenly the leader sat down stubbornly 
on the ice, put her black nose to the wind, and 
yelped. The sledge overtook her and there 
followed a general mixture out of which Cun- 
ayou vainly endeavored to restore order. But, 
for all his efforts, the pups seemed full of 
uneasiness, snuffing at the wind and cocking 
their sharp ears at the shore which was a mile 
away. 

“What is it?” said the boy, scratching his 
head in doubt. “Are they young devils and 
not wolves?” 

Keleepeles laughed. “They know that 
which we do not know,” he said, “Let us go 
to the land.” 

Somehow the team got into motion despite 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


the tangled harness. As they drew near the 
shore a frenzy seemed to run through them, 
as though they were indeed possessed of devils. 
Cunayou’s heart was heavy and furious. 
What had become of his training? 

“I am a fool/’ he panted angrily. “The 
smell of that which I cannot see is stronger 
than my whip, — and the dogs obey it.” 

“A small smell speaks very loud to a wolf,” 
said Keleepeles, with quick comfort. “Are 
you sure that the dogs will come back if you 
let them loose?” 

Cunayou hesitated. 

“Yesterday they would return, but now I 
do not know,” he said. 

“Then let them go, and try it.” 

The fat boy, with doubt in his mind, loosened 
the collars one by one from the wriggling, 
snapping pups, and one by one they tore off 
at top speed to where a single hummock of 
ice lifted near the shore. Around this they 
disappeared, and instantly there came back 
a chorus of frantic barking, mingled with a 
deeper and stronger note. 


70 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“It is the mother of them,” said Keleepeles, 
gravely. “Have your spear ready and come.” 

They walked steadily, having no desire to 
arrive out of breath. Ever the din grew 
louder, till, cautiously rounding the hummock, 
they saw that which sent the blood pumping 
through their hearts. Backed up close against 
the vertical wall of ice was a gaunt she bear, 
and huddled against her side a four-months cub. 
Twenty feet away, lying on her stomach, her 
jaws open and dripping, was a great she wolf, 
her red tongue hanging far out, and her eyes 
blazing. In between was the pack, nipping 
frantically at the bear’s yellow-white flanks. 

Cunayou’s heart stood still, and his knees 
knocked together. They were immediately 
behind the wolf, which did not move, though 
she turned her head and gave them one ter- 
rible glance. It was just as though she said: 
“We are both enemies of the bear, you and I, 
and afterward we can fight it out between us.” 

Then her attention went to the pups, and 
she was divided between licking and fondling 
them, and sending deep coughing barks against 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


71 


the great beast backed up against the wall 
of ice. Keleepeles shook his head and mo- 
tioned, and the two boys retreated to the 
corner of the hummock. 

“Wait and watch,” whispered the elder. 
“We do not kill to-day.” 

The bear sat back on her haunches, with 
the cub snuggling between her hind legs, her 
terrible fore arms free for action, her long 
black claws projecting, curved and sharp. 
A pup darted in from each side, snapping 
viciously. She swung at each, right and left, 
like a boxer. One she missed, but the other, 
caught in the tremendous force of her blow, 
flew thirty feet through the air and landed in 
a ball of yellow fur with a broken back. Cun- 
ayou trembled. 

“How soft were the arms of Allegoo, my 
mother,” he quavered. “Let us go home.” 

But Keleepeles neither smiled nor spoke. 
His whole body was tense. Every action of 
each animal meant something to him. He was 
reading the unwritten book that fascinates the 
hunter of the North. The cub pressing close 


72 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


to its mother’s side made quick little strokes 
of defense. The old bear did not notice her, 
the pink eyes being too busy elsewhere. 
Came a pause and the she wolf stiffened for 
a spring. She drew back, every sinew taut, 
the grizzled hair on her back standing straight 
up, her long tail straight out, her black muzzle 
lifted till it almost closed her nostrils. Then 
she came forward, not with a rush but in quick 
dancing bounds, from which one could not 
guess where she would attack. The bear 
waited, swaying a little, her great body and 
narrow, deep shoulders seeming almost soft 
and defenseless except for the mighty arms 
that she held out, the paws drooping as though 
in an attitude of prayer. The three pups 
squatted and licked their tongues, Then, in 
a flash, the end came. 

The mother of the team bayed a deep, angry 
note and darted forward. She touched the 
ice just six feet from her enemy, and, twisting 
her body, struck like lightning, — not at the 
bear’s left side at which she seemed to be aim- 
ing but high up in the hollow under her left 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


73 


forearm. Came a hoarse cough of pain, and 
the bear’s right arm twisted curiously down 
and, swinging across her chest, caught the wolf 
in her gray-white stomach. A muffled thud, 
the breath left the savage body, and it dropped 
immediately in front of the hesitating pups, 
where it twitched for a moment and lay still. 
Then with a throaty grunt the great white 
beast settled on all fours, and, with her cub 
trotting loosely close beside her, started for the 
shore. She did not even look round, but dis- 
appeared amongst a nest of boulders under the 
cliffs. Cunayou, glancing after her with the 
tears streaming down his face, stepped for- 
ward and picked up the body of the dead pup. 

It was just like Keleepeles not to say much 
at the moment. In fact he said nothing at all, 
but let his brother collect the battered rem- 
nants of his team. Being wise, he knew that 
one could not put cool thoughts into a hot 
brain ; but that night after the fat boy, who was 
now getting a little thinner, had fed the surviv- 
ing pups and put away four pounds of seal 
meat himself, Keleepeles began to talk. 


74 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“It was the fight of a mad wolf against that 
which was too strong for her.” 

“Why mad?” 

“She had gone mad because of the loss of her 
young, and was without doubt an outcast from 
the pack. It is so with most things that run. 
If one has a bad temper, or is old and useless, 
the pack turns it out and it hunts for itself. 
And the she wolf has seen us many times when 
we have not seen her, and followed along the 
shore. To-day, being crazy, she met the bear 
and fought. When I looked at her teeth, 
I found them much worn ; she was old and has 
fought much, for there were many wounds. 
The black hairs on her tail were nearly gone, 
and when winter came the wolverines would 
have pulled her down and eaten her.” 

Cunayou felt a little happier. His brother 
seemed to understand everything and it was 
very comforting, but, for all that, when he 
crawled into his sleeping-bag that night his 
brain was full of strange pictures that would 
not fade away and let him sleep. Presently 
he poked Keleepeles in the ribs. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


75 


“Is there anything which is not killed and 
eaten, — but just dies? You told me to-day 
that the white fox and the ravens would eat the 
dead wolves.” 

“I do not know of anything,” was the an- 
swer, ‘‘except ourselves. It is the law. Ai- 
vick told me that, and he knows all things.” 

Cunayou thought hard and in silence. 
“What is the law?” he demanded presently. 

“It is that by which all animals live.” Ke- 
leepeles was trying hard to make clear some- 
thing rather difficult for himself. “How else 
could they live?” He had never thought of 
that before. 

“But the she wolf went mad because we took 
her young. Is that the law? You have given 
me a strange word and perhaps I am a fool.” 

This was too much for his brother, who 
turned over and went straight to sleep, but 
Cunayou’s eyes would not stay closed. It was 
all so queer. The mink killed the marmot, and 
the wolverines killed the mink, and so on all the 
way up. The she wolf had gone mad because 
he had taken her pups, and as a result the she 


76 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


wolf was stiff on the ice, waiting for the ravens. 
Suddenly he had a throb of pity, and then a 
curious wave of affection for all living things 
came over him. He shut his eyes and thought 
of them, — a great procession that walked and 
ran and swam and flew. He did not want 
them to die, and most particularly he did not 
want to kill them. One of the pups had once 
licked his hand. He liked that and always 
remembered it. And just then far away he 
heard a honk-honk that seemed to come 
straight from behind the clouds, which it 
actually did, so once again he poked Keleepeles 
in a certain place that always awoke him 
immediately. 

“What is it?” he whispered. 

“Does not the sculpin know the wild goose?” 
yawned Keleepeles. “I am full of slumber; 
put your hands on your stomach and sleep 
also. Your head is too empty to be filled to- 
night.” 

Cunayou put his hands where he was bid, 
but his active little brain worked on. It was 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


77 - 


no use bothering Keleepeles any more, and he 
would have to think for himself. Just at that 
moment a delightful idea came to him. 

In the igloo of Aivick there had been some- 
thing that the hunter cherished greatly, — a 
small ivory model of a kayak, with an Eskimo 
in it and his paddle in his hands. Across the 
kayak was the body of a small seal. Cunayou 
had fingered this very carefully, for he loved 
it, and despite all that Allegoo had said it did 
not seem a difficult thing to make if his fingers 
were strong enough. As he lay, he knew that 
he could make one just like it, and further- 
more, that he could make drawings of animals 
and hunting-scenes that the tribe would be 
proud of, and perhaps sell to the captains of 
the whaling-ships which Aivick’s brother had 
once seen in Baffin Bay. But to do this it 
was necessary that he watch the animals and 
see how they walked and slept and hunted so 
as to get the thing down right. The more he 
thought of it the more he liked it, and straight- 
way reached over and punched Keleepeles just 


78 BROTHER ESKIMO 

where his stomach runs into his chest. At that 
the wind went out of his brother with a great 
gust and he sat up gasping. 

“Have you gone mad like the she wolf? 
Shall I be the white bear and kill you?” 

But Cunayou was too full of eagerness to 
mind, and poured out his heart in the dark, 
until at the end of it Keleepeles yawned, and, 
pinching the round cheek, spoke sleepily: 

“It is well, fat one, and perhaps through 
you great honor will come to our tribe. But 
now let me, your brother, sleep in peace, or 
your body will be too sore to draw anything 
until you are an old man and blind, and then 
it will be too late.” 


CHAPTER VII 


I F it had not been for Cunayou’s team the 
boys would never have got as far south as 
Wager Bay, which they reached at the end of 
April, but the going was so good, and the pups 
pulled so well, that, seized more and more by 
the spirit of adventure, they held on day after 
day, past bleak shores and long headlands, 
where, after all, there was little invitation to 
explore. 

“It is in my mind,” said Keleepeles, one 
night after they had eaten heartily of seal 
meat, “that we are coming to the place of the 
Yellowknives, and it is well to be very wise.” 

“Tell me.” Cunayou’s mouth was full and 
he spoke indistinctly. 

“I remember,” said his brother, “especially 
one thing among many that Aivick told me. 
He said that when a Yellowknife gets very 
old and cannot chew anything, his eldest son 

takes a cord, which must be of moose sinew, and 
79 


80 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


puts it tight around his neck and strangles him, 
after which the son shouts three times, to 
empty his heart of many things.” 

Cunayou’s eyes opened wide. He tried 
hard to speak. “But why moose sinew?” he 
stammered presently. 

“Because his father has got it ready for the 
purpose.” 

“Then why do we go to the place of the 
Yellowknives? — my stomach is sick.” 

“They will not hurt us. There are many 
things to put away in the mind and make pic- 
tures of by and by. And they make much 
fire.” 

“What is fire?” Cunayou was obviously 
puzzled. 

“It is like many lamps that burn together 
with a great flame. Only it is not oil but wood 
that is burnt.” 

“Then after the fire there is nothing left?” 

“Not anything.” 

“Is it not foolish to make fire instead of 
paddles and kayaks and sledges?” 

“There is plenty left for that. Aivick told 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


81 


me that they use strange kayaks, which are 
open on top, when they cross the little seas in 
which the water is not bitter. They are not 
like the one we shall build to-morrow. And 
they have pipes which are made of the dew 
claw of a moose, a great deer larger than a 
caribou, and the stem is the wing bone of a 
crane. They are strange people.” 

Cunayou nodded. There were almost too 
many wonders, but when next morning Ke- 
leepeles set about building his kayak he was 
full of interest. Enough driftwood had been 
collected for the frame, and the boy toiled over 
the thing with the queer wisdom that one finds 
in the silent races of the earth. He could not 
have told Cunayou how to do it, but he did it 
himself because he knew quite certainly by the 
look and the feel of the slim wooden skeleton 
when he went wrong. There was not a nail 
or a screw in the whole affair, and, like their 
sledge, it was built with a knife and held to- 
gether by sinews. Then, when he had put the 
last touches on the framework, he stretched 
scraped walrus hide over it until the thing 


82 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


was as tight as a drum. There was the slim 
bow, and the equally slim stern, and the cockpit 
shut off from the water-tight compartments 
fore and aft, and the apron that kept water 
out of the cockpit. It took them more than 
a week, and when it was finished they fashioned 
a double-bladed paddle and looked at the sky 
and longed for open water. 

Perhaps you have never seen a kayak. 
There is a model of one in front of me now, 
carved out of a walrus tusk by the clever 
fingers of Cunayou years later. It is delicate 
and slim and perfectly balanced, and altogether 
fit for any weather. The sturdy figure of 
Keleepeles sits amidships with the double- 
bladed paddle in his hands, and every curve 
and line of it speaks of the far-away Arctic 
seas. 

In May there was open water south of 
Southampton Island, which lies just east of 
the wide mouth of Wager Bay, and the boys, 
being now completely equipped with dogs, 
sled, kayak, and weapons, struck seaward until 
they came to the edge of the great ice-field. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


83 


Here they lived for two weeks, and Cunayou 
learned how to handle a paddle as well as the 
shortness of his arms permitted. But despite 
the fact that there were white whales a little 
farther out, and walrus and seal, and an abun- 
dance of fish, the mind of Keleepeles contin- 
ually struck inland to the unknown places 
where lived the wandering Yellowknife Indi- 
ans. Then one day he spoke out. 

“It is in my heart that we go on to the 
south and west,” he said, “but I am greatly 
puzzled.” 

“Why?” demanded Cunayou. It was a new 
thing for his brother to be puzzled, and matters 
had progressed very well in the past. 

“It is the dogs.” 

Cunayou stared at his team. The young 
wolves had grown prodigiously, and though 
twice a day they ate enormous quantities of 
fish and seal fat, they were still hungry. But 
for all that they had a wild, tireless strength 
that seemed to know no limit. He had never 
been away from the shore in all his life, and 
his ideas of what lay beyond it were extremely 


84 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


hazy; still, it was impossible to think of life 
in any form without dogs. 

“On the land away from the sea there is no 
place for young wolves in summer-time unless 
they return to the pack,” Keleepeles said, with 
evident distress. He knew what the pups 
meant to his brother. 

“Then I do not go. Have you not said that 
we shall go back to Aivick and Allegoo behind 
my team when the snows come? I will stay 
on the ice all summer and feed them,” con- 
cluded the fat boy, despondently. “I will 
never leave them.” 

“The day may come when you will be glad 
to leave them.” 

Cunayou shook his head. He was a little 
frightened at the thought of differing from 
this brother, who knew so much, but the pups 
had entered into his very heart. He had never 
before possessed anything that was quite his 
own to love, so he did not say anything at all, 
but went over and sat down amongst them, 
whereupon they began to climb all over him 
and push their cold, black pointed muzzles into 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


85 


his hot brown palm. After a while he felt 
somehow comforted. It could never be that 
on a journey so wonderful as this he would be 
asked to do anything that hurt so much. 

It was with mixed feelings that the boys 
first saw great Wager Bay open its hundred- 
mile length into the country of the Yellow- 
knives, and, if the truth be told, it would not 
have taken much to alter Keleepeles’s decision 
and turn him back to the edge of the ice. And 
to understand this it is necessary to understand 
what the Island Eskimo — for of such were 
the people of Aivick — felt about the Yellow- 
knives. It was seldom that they saw more 
than very few of them together, for they do 
not travel as a tribe but in isolated families. 
Compared with the Eskimo they were not 
strong, but they were better armed, being 
usually possessed of rifles, which, amongst the 
Arctic Islanders, were till a few years ago very 
scarce. The Eskimo, while they despised 
their Indian visitors and would not intermarry, 
were at the same time a little afraid of them, 
just as most simple-minded people are sus- 


86 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


picious of strangers. Aivick would eat with 
his dogs but not with a Yellowknife; but for 
that matter the Eskimo at large considered 
himself superior even to the few white men he 
saw. 

Ai vick’s father had believed that his father’s 
father had come across from Asia by the 
Behring Straits, and that soon afterward the 
Eskimos divided themselves into three groups, 
— the Laplander, who is small and dumpy and 
nearly white, the Coast Husky, who is a poor 
fellow and does not venture much on the ice, 
and the Islanders, his own tribe, the aristocrats 
of them all. As for an Indian, he was an out- 
cast, — a person to be suspected and of no real 
importance. 

The boys traveled steadily a mile from 
shore, and what took Cunayou’s fancy most 
was the number of trees. They were not what 
we call trees, being only a few dwarf birch and 
spruce and black alder that grew in the bottom 
of the gullies running down to the edge of the 
ice, but to Cunayou they were enormous and 
remarkable, because neither of the boys had 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


87 


ever seen anything growing except the gray 
tufted caribou moss, and lichens and other 
stunted things that manage to live in the very 
far North. These scattered thickets puzzled 
him, and were suggestive of other strange 
things to come. 

On the fourth day, when they were perhaps 
a hundred miles in from Hudson Bay, the 
sharp eye of Keleepeles caught a thin gray 
wisp that seemed to curl up out of one of these 
thickets a long way off. He stopped at once 
and pointed. 

“There is fire there,” he announced with 
a touch of triumph. “It is the fire of the 
Yellowknives.” 

Cunayou felt greatly troubled. He had 
never seen smoke going up into the sky before; 
in fact, the only smoke he had ever seen was 
when Allegoo’s seal-oil lamp needed oil. 

“Then where do we go?” he asked uneasily. 

“Straight on. We sleep there to-night.” 

“But will they not hurt us with the black 
stick that spits fire and kills a long way off, — 
as Aivick once told me?” 


88 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Keleepeles laughed. “A dog does not kill 
a wolf, and we are wolves of the islands, you 
and I. Let your heart be large. There is 
nothing to fear.” 

They went on, the pups pricking their ears 
when the smell of the distant camp came down 
the wind, but Cunayou kept them well in hand. 
Indeed, he could not well know how complete 
his mastery was, for, while his team was used 
to the scent of the two boys — and to an animal 
who thinks through his nose every man has a 
different scent — they knew nothing of the 
strange odors that now drifted into their 
twitching nostrils. 

Keleepeles halted a mile off shore. 

“Stay here with the dogs,” he commanded. 
I go to see.” 

He strode off confidently, trailing his spear. 
Cunayou, sitting on the sledge beside the 
kayak, which was balanced carefully across it, 
saw his figure dwindle, and thought very hard. 
Suppose Keleepeles went into that place and 
never came out. What then? He was so 
lonely that after a little he moved and sat 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


89 


amongst the dogs, scratching the lean gray- 
head of the leader, and reflecting that here at 
least was something he could depend upon. 
Then his brother disappeared altogether, and 
the fat boy waited with his heart in his mouth, 
until, some moments later, he saw the short, 
broad figure step out and hold his spear level 
above his head, which was, of course, a signal 
to come on. Ten minutes later Cunayou was 
staring at the oldest old woman he had ever 
seen. 

She was very bent and very bony, — so bent 
that, though the boys were not tall, her head 
came below Keleepeles’s shoulder. It was 
just as though she stooped to pick up some- 
thing but never quite reached it. Her eyes, 
which had once been black, were now half 
covered with a dull glaze, and her voice was 
queer and cracked. Cunayou, staring round, 
felt much as any of us felt when we saw our 
first Indian. The igloo he saw was queer, 
being made of skins over a pointed framework 
of poles, and through the point where the poles 
crossed the smoke lifted lazily. 


90 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


The old crone began to talk in a jerky- 
manner. Keleepeles seemed to understand 
fairly well, but Cunayou, though he caught an 
Eskimo word here and there, was greatly 
puzzled. There was much use of signs, and a 
drawing of lines in the ashes of the fire. 
Finally she looked at the pups and showed her 
yellow teeth, just as though she were an old 
she wolf herself. Pointing to the sun, she 
made a short curve low down near the horizon, 
raised her fingers three times, drew another 
line in the ashes, — but toward the fire, — peered 
once more at the pups, rubbed her leg and 
cackled, and finally hit at the ground with a 
stick, whereat the pups whimpered nervously. 
After it was all over, and the cracked voice 
had subsided into mumbling, Keleepeles 
nodded contentedly and explained: 

“She says that her name is Keepatis, the 
Giddy Girl. She is very old, and by and by 
will be blind, therefore the tribe has gone away 
and she is an outcast. I told you that the 
animals have outcasts, but so have the Yellow- 
knives. She is able to take care of herself by 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


91 


snaring rabbits and fishing, and will stay here 
all summer. There are thirty people in her 
tribe, and they will not come back until the sun 
is low down, at the beginning of winter. They 
are hunting and fishing in some lakes not far 
from here. She is not afraid of the dogs, and 
will beat them if they try to bite her, but after 
she is blind she cannot do anything any more. 
She says, too, that we must stay here until the 
pups know her.” 

Cunayou stared. “She is too old to master 
them.” 

“She is very old, but her legs are like the 
sinews of the walrus, and very strong. Look 
at her now.” 

Cunayou looked. She was peering at him, 
and presently, beginning to laugh, took up 
a short, thick stick and holding it in her arms 
commenced to sway back and forth, and mum- 
ble a Yellowknife lullaby. The fat boy felt 
suddenly very angry. 

“Am I a child, that she mocks me?” 

“You are a child among the Yellowknives, 
and she is very wise and no fool.” 


92 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou swallowed something he felt like 
saying, and looked at the pups. The leader 
was sniffing at the old woman. It was a new 
human smell, quite different from that of the 
two boys. Keepatis sat motionless until the 
leader turned away, and, one after the other, 
the other pups crept up and made their own 
investigation. Then the three lay down, their 
noses between their paws, their gray-green 
eyes fixed watchfully, while the wind ruffled 
the tawny hair on their long backs, and their 
black pointed nostrils quivered with odors that 
were new and strange. Keleepeles watched it 
all with intense interest. 

“I did not think they were so well trained,” 
he said presently. “There will not now be any 
trouble. They know the smell of Keepatis 
and will not forget.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


T HAT night Cunayou for the first time 
tasted food that had been cooked. He 
watched a rabbit sizzling in front of the fire, 
and strange smells came to him just as they 
had come to the pups. He licked his lips, 
just as any fellow would lick his if all his life 
he had sat in a butcher’s shop and eaten the 
steak as the butcher gave it to him. He saw 
a whitefish put in a copper pot and boiled, and, 
to keep him quiet, for he was getting very rest- 
less, Keepatis gave him the water the fish had 
been boiled in, and he thought it delicious, but 
it burned his throat rather badly. Then they 
divided the fish into three parts, and ate the 
rabbit with their fingers, tossing the bones to 
the pups, and the fat boy crawled into the 
teepee, where he lay on his back and thought 
what a wonderful world it was. 

Now, in order to get the picture of the far 
North just a little clearer, consider old Kee- 

93 


94 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


patis. All that she had in the world was a 
small copper pot, a crooked knife — very much 
worn — a small hatchet, a fishing-net, a few feet 
of copper wire for rabbit snares, an ice-chisel a 
pair of snow-shoes, a flint and steel, a pipe 
made of the dew claw of a moose with a stem 
of the bone of a crane’s wing, a little kinic- 
kinic or wild tobacco, a small canoe and a few 
skins to sleep in. So long as her strength and 
sight lasted she could and did live in what she 
thought comfort. No doubt she had at times 
dim longings for the sight and sound of her 
tribe, and children playing in the sun, but, 
if so, there was no use complaining. It is true 
that Keepatis knew very little, and was only 
waiting for the time when she would not see 
anything any more, but it is written that the 
Master of All Things gives a special kind of 
comfort in the wilderness. So, by and by, the 
snows would come, and Keepatis would go 
before the snows disappeared. No smoke 
would drift up from her camp until, months 
later, some other Yellowknife would happen 
along and take the copper pot. As to the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


95 


fishing-nets, the rabbits would have eaten them, 
and Carcajou, the wolverine, would have his 
home under the old canoe. 

That is a fair picture of the North, — a place 
where the sky and the horizon seem a long 
way off, and quiet brown and red people 
live close to the ice or close to the earth, with 
but few possessions; where man seems very 
small in his surroundings, and does not com- 
plain. 

At midnight Cunayou woke up with a groan 
and punched his brother in the ribs. 

“There is an evil spirit in my stomach. 
What shall I do?” 

Keleepeles grunted. “His brother is in my 
stomach, and a greater spirit than yours. Lie 
on your face and kill it.” 

Cunayou rolled over, but the spirit was hard 
to kill. “Is it the food that has been in the 
fire?” he whispered uncomfortably. 

“Without doubt.” 

“But the old woman is at peace. Why am 
I tormented?” 

“Wait for some days and your stomach will 


96 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


like it. Could Keepatis eat a square-flipper 
seal and have peace? This is a strange 
country, and it is well that we take it slowly. 
Perhaps next winter you will miss the fire.” 

Cunayou drew a long breath. It was a 
strange country, inside and out. He thought 
a little longingly of Aivick and Allegoo, until 
a whimper from the pups recalled him. The 
wind whispered through the bare branches 
beside the teepee, and just then Keepatis, who 
seemed fast asleep, reached out and threw some 
wood on the fire. The smoke tickled his nose, 
and he began to sneeze. Presently he felt a 
dry, withered hand patting his round cheek, 
and that brought him a queer sort of comfort, 
though it was very different from Allegoo’s 
fat, oily palm. 

During the next few weeks the boys learned 
many things. Keepatis, though very old, was 
still very wise in the ways of her people. To 
see her setting a snare was a lesson in wood- 
craft. When Cunayou tempted her into the 
sledge for the first trial and raced along shore, 
there was a wild time while her cracked voice 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


97 


screamed strange things, and her one fairly 
good eye snapped with excitement. Indeed, 
it seemed that the arrival of her visitors had re- 
newed her youth, so agile and tireless did she 
become. Cunayou was taught to build a fire 
of dry cottonwood, which is smokeless and does 
not betray one’s presence. She told him of the 
training of Chiliqui, her grandson, and what 
she lacked in Eskimo the boys soon picked up 
in the Yellowknife language. She told of the 
white men who build a big fire and have to 
stand away, while the Indian builds a small 
one and stays close to it. Sometimes with a 
lingering tenderness she spoke of Sachinnie, 
the Beaverwood, her son who was hunting 
somewhere to the west. She would never see 
him again. And all this time the days were 
getting longer, till there opened down the 
center of Wager Bay a strip of clear water. 
Spring had come to the far North. 

It was nearly the end of May before the bay 
was empty of ice from shore to shore, but long 
before this the boys were at home in the small 
canoe which Keepatis insisted they should take. 


98 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


The kayak, she said, would do for her. There 
were some breathless moments when first she 
ventured into it, but these soon passed, and 
they had a vivid picture of the active old 
woman wielding the double-bladed paddle. 
Then came the evening before their departure, 
when she gave Keleepeles a short, stiff bow and 
a sheaf of arrows that she had toiled over night 
after night. It was only when it came to 
bending the bow and setting the sinew string 
taut that she had asked for help. After that 
she looked at Cunayou with a queer affection 
in her dim eyes, and bade him strip and hold 
out his arm. 

“You go to a strange country,” she said, 
“and this will make you safe.” 

So, using a sharp fish bone, she tattooed 
his smooth skin with the sign of the track of 
the black bear, which is something like the mark 
a child’s foot makes in wet sand, only the instep 
shows as deeply as the rest of the foot. And, 
when the pricking was done, she rubbed in 
charcoal dust, and over it all pressed some hard 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


99 


grease till the tiny sores should heal and new 
skin grow over the charcoal. Cunayou 
winced, but caught his brother’s eye and did 
not laugh. 

“It is the sign of Sachinnie, my son,” said 
Keepatis, contentedly, “for first of all he killed 
a bear. It is the same custom with all hunters. 
The Yellowknives will not hurt you now.” 

They pushed off next morning, and Cun- 
ayou looked back with a lump in his throat. 
He did not know where he was going, and 
Keepatis had been kind. She stood on the 
shore, staring after them. Beside her the 
pups, now half grown, sniffed at the wind and 
from the teepee a thin wreath of smoke lifted 
into the clear sky. The place was not home, 
but Cunayou had been happy there. He won- 
dered if they should find the old woman when 
they came back; and if they did not find her, 
what of the dogs, for without dogs it would be 
hard to regain the Arctic ice and discover 
Aivick. Then the gully slid away, the camp 
vanished around a point, and there was no 


100 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


sound except a ripple at the bow, and the 
steady stroke of Keleepeles’s paddle behind 
him. 

The country was very new. Hour after 
hour the* land drifted slowly by, nearly bare of 
snow. There was the sound of many waters 
from rivers through which inland lakes emptied 
themselves into the sea. For the most part 
it was a succession of bare rocky ridges, except 
where the gulleys came down to the shore. 
Cunayou fell into a sort of dream and paddled 
quite without knowing it, till on one sunshiny 
afternoon Keleepeles spoke sharply: 

“Look! — straight ahead!” 

Cunayou started and stared hard. Three 
miles away was a strip of muddy sand on 
which he saw a queer mound that was unlike 
anything he knew. At the same moment he 
smelt an old smell. Around the mound was a 
group of yellowish, white specks that contin- 
ually moved. It was for all the world like a 
swarm of ants that were exceedingly busy 
about something. 

“What is it?” he said over his shoulder. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


101 


“White foxes. We go ashore here, then 
climb up and look down at them.” 

Two hours later Cunayou lay on his stomach 
and peered over the edge of the cliff. Fifty 
feet below and two hundred feet away a band 
of white foxes tore at the body of a blue 
whale left by the receding tide. With them 
were perhaps thirty pups. 

Keleepeles grunted with satisfaction. “I 
have not seen so many before.” 

“Then it is good hunting?” 

“But what shall we do when we kill?” 

The fat boy rubbed his stomach. “Eat 
them.” 

“The wolverine may eat them, but not we. 
This is not the time to kill. See, they are 
very foolish.” 

Cunayou’s eyes narrowed. He knew the 
red fox, and noted that these were shorter and 
stumpier, with a poor brush, and no marking 
on the end of it. They seemed clumsy in com- 
parison. “They are like children,” he said 
presently. 

“They are children,” said Keleepeles, “but 


102 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


they go out on the ice a long way, and can 
swim fast. In a season of the year their skins 
are yellow from oil. By and by the new hair 
will come, till in winter they are like the snow ; 
but in summer the fur is nearly brown, and 
that on the belly is blue like the sky. They 
have no stomach to fight, and will hunt only 
for their own young — of which there are many 
— twice a year.” 

“And that one,” said Cunayou, pointing to 
where a mile down the shore stood a single fox, 
very much alone. 

“An outlaw. When it is dark he will come 
and eat. There is no place for him now. 
Watch!” 

He threw a small stone that hit one fox on 
the back. It turned like a flash, gave a sharp 
angry bark and j umped at its nearest neighbor. 
In ten seconds the whole band was snapping 
furiously, a heaving blanket of stained yellow 
fur. Food was forgotten: It was exactly 
like a swarm of dirty children in a rough and 
tumble fight. Old foxes, middle-aged foxes, 
young foxes and pups, rolled over and over, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 103 

their noses wrinkled, their white teeth bared, 
all intensely savage and all about nothing. 

“He works hard, but he is a fool,” chuckled 
Keleepeles. “When there are no whales he 
eats lemmings or marmot. He is always in 
a hurry, but he does not get anywhere. Every 
animal despises him, and is his enemy. The 
snow owl follows his young to kill them with 
his beak, and the gray wolf hunts the parents, 
who do not defend themselves but sit on their 
stomachs and snap. See, they have killed one 
of their brothers and go on eating.” 

Cunayou watched and marveled, for in the 
real Arctic one does not find many animals 
together. Presently the whole pack, as 
though seized by some wild idea, set off down 
the coast, quarreling and playing. A moment 
later the boy stood over the body of the dead 
fox. 

“His feet are different.” 

“They are very woolly, because he travels 
much on the ice, and they have pads of down 
underneath so that he may not slip, and some- 
times when he goes through fhe beach slime 


104 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


his feet become great balls of clay, and he 
drowns when the tide comes in and catches 
him. Aivick told me that far out on drifting 
ice he has found white foxes, who do not starve 
but catch birds and seals. At times they are 
very sick, and die from dirt and too much food, 
and when sickness comes they go and hunt for 
old wife’s grass to heal them. But they are 
fools and die nevertheless. Let us go back 
and watch. We shall see many things.” 

An hour passed, and from the cover of the 
cliffs the boys noted the outcast of the pack 
steal up to the dead whale and gorge himself. 
He was on guard every moment, — an old 
broken-down dog fox who seemed to show 
in every movement that he admitted himself 
to be disreputable and unworthy, and ate, 
choking his food down, exactly as does a greedy 
boy who has stolen a banana and is putting it 
out of sight in the shortest possible time. 
Then, as day drew into night, followed a 
strange procession that came in appointed 
order, and ate and slipped away. First a 
white bear, and when he was satisfied two gray 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


105 


wolves; and after the wolves there waddled 
down Carcajou, the wolverine, and after 
Carcajou there was a dribble of smaller an- 
imals, each knowing perfectly well where he 
fitted in. It was the law of the wilderness. 
Cunayou saw it working, and put away in his 
head as many of these things as he could, that 
some day he might draw and carve them for 
the tribe. 

t)o you begin to understand Cunayou, this 
fat boy who had in his nature nothing hard or 
stern, and was full of a queer love for all living 
things? He admired Keleepeles, and knew 
in his heart that he himself was different. He 
would never be a great hunter, but he was 
convinced that some day he would be some- 
thing unusual. He never spoke of this, 
though his fingers were beginning to itch for 
something with which to draw or carve. And 
the very next day they found a real Yellow- 
knife hunter. 


CHAPTER IX 


I T happened again through smoke, just as it 
generally does in the North, where there 
are no visiting-cards. There a fellow makes a 
fire and knows perfectly well that if another 
fellow is near he will pretty soon drop in. It 
is a place where you don’t depend on others, 
but are glad to see them. That gives another 
picture of the North, — an enormous tract of 
country where, miles apart, little wreaths of 
smoke are going up* from little camp fires, 
each one signaling “Come in and have some- 
thing to eat.” It is rather nice when a fellow 
thinks of it. 

The Yellowknife did not move a muscle 
when the boys beached their canoe, and came 
slowly toward him. Of course they stopped 
a little way off and held their hands empty 
above their heads, which is a sign of peace, but 
even at that Cunayou felt a bit uncomfortable. 
The hunter was sitting by a small fire, his rifle 
106 


BROTHER ESKIMO 107 

within reach, and looked at them suspiciously, 
— for the Yellowknife is apt to be afraid of 
the Eskimo. Presently he put the two ques- 
tions which open all conversations in the wil- 
derness. 

“Where do you come from?” 

Keleepeles made a gesture that took in the 
whole Arctic Circle. He spoke with his eyes 
as much as with his arm. 

“Where do you go?” 

Again Keleepeles .motioned, but this time 
somewhat indefinitely, after which the Yellow- 
knife got up and stared hard at the canoe. 
Suddenly his face grew dark. 

“Where did you steal that canoe?” 

“It was not stolen: an old woman gave it 
to us.” 

The hunter shook his head angrily and 
snatched up his rifle. “You are thieves and 
liars. You have stolen it. All Eskimo are 
liars.” 

Fear trickled through Cunayou’s veins, and 
he felt rather sick, but Keleepeles stood like 
a statue. 


108 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“We are not thieves, and for a whole moon 
we stayed with an old woman. She gave us 
the canoe, and this bow she made me. I speak 
truth and no lie.” 

But the Yellowknife did not answer. The 
rifle lay loose in the crook of his elbow, and 
one lean, brown finger curved around the trig- 
ger. Then Cunayou, who had been thinking 
hard, even while his blood turned to water, 
had an inspiration. 

“You are Sachinnie, the son of Keepatis, 
the Giddy Girl, and I am your brother,” he 
blurted. His eyes were very bright. 

“Then you are a fool as well as a thief,” the 
Yellowknife growled exactly like an angry 
wolf. 

“Look and see.” Cunayou tore open his 
tunic and bared his shoulder. “Is not this the 
sign of Sachinnie, the Beaver Wood, and was 
it not made there by your mother, and am I 
not then your brother, having the same sign? 
You speak too fast, and -we are not afraid. 
Let me see your own arm.” 

The fat boy got this off very fast, for it 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


109 


was a good deal for him to say, and at the end 
of it his cheeks were puffed out, and he 
breathed hard while he looked up at the hunter 
— who was a very tall man — with an air of de- 
fiance that was almost contempt. 

For a moment nothing happened. Pre- 
sently Sachinnie began to laugh and show his 
yellow teeth, till, presently, he bared his shoul- 
der and there was the sign of the black bear, 
but done very evenly and beautifully in gun- 
powder, just as the fingers of Keepatis had 
left it when he was only seventeen years old. 
Then he put out a long, sinewy hand and laid 
it on the head of Cunayou. 

“We are indeed brothers, you and I.” 

Cunayou nodded rather stiffly, and tried 
not to show how excited he was. Keleepeles 
had a wild desire to shout with laughter, and 
conquered it with difficulty, but his brother 
had without doubt saved the situation, and just 
then Sachinnie asked about Keepatis, and 
where she was. He did not appear partic- 
ularly interested to hear that his mother was 
still alive and apparently well, and something 


110 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


warned the boys to say nothing about the dogs, 
but the danger-point was passed and gradually 
their talk became more free. Sachinnie 
seemed puzzled that two young Eskimos 
should have ventured so far, and after a while 
asked in an off-hand way whether they would 
come with him. The invitation sounded gen- 
erous, but, as a matter of fact, the Yellowknife 
realized that while the boys would help him 
hunt, it was not probable that they would want 
to take any fur back with them. And to make 
the prospect more attractive he displayed his 
rifle and an assortment of traps that made 
Keleepeles’s eyes bulge. 

“•Where do you go?” asked the latter, cu- 
riously. 

Sachinnie stooped and drew a map in the 
sand, which, though it was rough, was never- 
theless extremely accurate, and showed many 
things that government surveys do not record. 
There was Wager Bay contracting to a narrow 
channel, and expanding again to the west, the 
Quoich River running south toward Chester- 
field Inlet, and the inlet itself broadening to 


BROTHER ESKIMO 111 

salt water with all its tributary lakes and 
streams. 

“I hunt here and here.” He indicated the 
places with his forefinger. “There are caribou 
and mink and otter. Perhaps there are wood- 
buffalo, but I have not yet found them. In the 
lakes are many geese and swans and very many 
berries in the months of the large moon.” He 
meant August and September. “Then the fur 
is not good, but the caribou are very fat, and it 
is easy to live. To-morrow I go.” 

“Where will you be when the snow comes?” 
put in Keleepeles, with the return trip in the 
back of his head. 

“I travel to trade at Dubaunt Lake.” 
Sachinnie bent over and enlarged his map to 
show the country to the southwest. 

“But we go north, to my father’s tribe.” 

“Then I will take you to the long bay that 
leads to salt water.” 

“Db you search for your people?” asked 
Cunayou, a little uncertainly. 

Sachinnie grinned. “Have I not found a 
brother? And besides, where there are many 


112 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


hunters there is poor hunting. I go alone.” 
At that Keleepeles nodded slowly, and things 
took shape in his mind. Had Sachinnie 
been traveling to his people he could have gone 
alone, for the young hunter had no desire to 
spend months as a member of a band of 
Yellowknives. But that the three of them 
should journey inland seemed attractive. 
There was much to be learned from Sachinnie. 
Then he had a sudden thought. 

“Shall we take much fur?” he asked care- 
lessly. “And whose fur shall it be?” 

“Are they not my traps?” The answer 
came a little sharply. 

“But shall we not help to set and empty 
them?” Keleepeles’s voice was very good- 
natured and very steady. 

“You cannot carry fur to the North. It is 
not worth anything to those who live in snow 
houses and see no white men.” 

“I have it in my stomach that I and my 
brother, Cunayou, would carry each a piece 
of fur to Allegoo, our mother, — the piece we 
would have. Is is well?” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


113 


Sachinnie thought hard and quickly. In 
case they got a black fox it would not be well, 
but though he had caught both silver-gray and 
pointed foxes, he had never yet got a black 
one. These boys were strong and capable, and 
he looked forward to a summer of leisure when 
there would be little for him to do but eat. 

Presently he nodded slowly: “It is well.” 

That night there was* but little sleep for 
Keleepeles and his brother. Their heads were 
full of visions. Sachinnie had showed them 
his traps again, and talked with fascinating 
knowledge about the smaller fur-bearing ani- 
mals. The large ones they knew themselves, 
but not the mink and otter and marten. Car- 
cajou, Keleepeles had sometimes seen, but it 
was hard to imagine anything like a lynx in a 
region where there were no trees. He fondled 
the steel traps as a child fondles his toys, while 
the hunter’s spirit throbbed and throbbed. 
Cunayou was rather silent. Would he ever 
be able to draw half the things he would prob- 
ably see? It seemed to him that Keleepeles 
was wiser even than he thought; for Kelee- 


114 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


peles had apparently known what this journey 
of theirs would reveal. 

Then there was the rifle. It was quite 
impossible to describe what Cunayou felt about 
this, but if you had been all your life accus- 
tomed to hear of your father walking up to a 
white bear and pushing a spear into his 
stomach, and suddenly discovered that he 
could stand two hundred paces away and kill 
him quite dead just by pressing with your 
forefinger, you might get something of the 
queer thrill that ran through the boys the 
first time they looked through the V-shaped 
sights. It was, of course, white man’s magic, 
but good magic, and Keleepeles ached for the 
time when he should put it to his own shoulder. 

They started the day afterward, Sachinnie 
ahead in his own canoe. His paddle made no 
noise and he skirted the islands of upper 
Wager Bay with slow strokes, while his keen 
eyes continually explored the shore. If you 
have ever watched an Indian paddling alone it 
must have been quite clear that his body be- 
came almost a part of the canoe, and yielded 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


115 


to it with an easy grace very difficult to attain. 
By this time the boys were accustomed to 
cooked food, so that when camp was made 
they busied themselves around the fire while 
Sachinnie set up the teepee poles, a simple 
affair that took only a few moments, and struck 
Cunayou as a much easier process than build- 
ing an igloo. The camp itself was much the 
same every evening, a sheltered spot in the 
thickest part of the scanty timber, and one 
from which they could see the water. And the 
very first night out Sachinnie laughed and 
asked Keleepeles to snare some rabbits for 
breakfast. 

“But I have no wire or sinew,’’ said the boy. 

The Yellowknife chuckled and gave him a 
small coil of the precious material. Then 
Keleepeles, walking slowly, — for he was in a 
strange place, — selected a run where there was 
rabbit dung, and set up on each side of it a 
piece of branch, so that when a rabbit passed 
he would perforce go along the middle of the 
.narrow track. Just beyond the branches, and 
a little to one side, he selected a sapling some 


116 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


seven feet high, bent it over, and, trimming 
the top, fastened to it some three feet of wire, 
the end of which formed a running noose. 
Holding the noose carefully, he pinned it 
down, so that it remained just clear of the 
ground. It was large enough to admit the 
head and neck of a rabbit, but not his shoul- 
ders, and was fastened just so that the animal 
running into it would release it from the pin. 
He did this four or five times, when it was 
too dark to work any longer. Just as he fin- 
ished he started up and saw Sachinnie standing 
beside him. The Yellowknife had come with- 
out a sound. 

“It is very good,” said the latter, approv- 
ingly. “We shall feed well.” 

That night when the fire was puttering in 
the middle of the teepee, and Cunayou was 
sitting with his shirt off, he glanced curiously 
at Sachinnie, and spoke after a little hesitation. 

“Yesterday you said that perhaps we should 
kill a wood buffalo. What is this thing?” 

“It is larger than a caribou, and has long 
hair on its chest that reaches to the ground. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


117 


There may be some where we go, but their home 
is between the Peace River and the Slave River, 
— a long way off to the south and west.” 

“Tell me more,” demanded Cunayou, his 
eyes very bright. “I did not know that any- 
thing was bigger than a caribou, except the 
whale and the walrus.” 

“He lives in the land of little sticks. The 
cow has but one calf, late in the summer time. 
It has long legs, and is foolish and weak.” 

“But it is strong when the snow comes?” 

“Not so.” 

“Then how does it live?” 

“Because the cow takes it to a hidden place 
among the little sticks, and stays beside it. 
When the snows get too deep for it to walk, 
the calf lies still and soon is covered. Then it 
moves a little but does not come out, and more 
snow falls and it is by itself in a small house 
of snow and quite warm.” 

“But, having no food, it dies,” said Cunayou, 
sadly. 

“It does not die but puts its head out of the 
snow and the cow, being still there, suckles it 


118 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


all winter. Its body does not come out, but 
only its head.” 

Keleepeles looked up sharply. This 
sounded like big magic, but Sachinnie was 
quite grave. 

“Is this a true tale that you tell?” 

“I do not lie to my brother,” came the some- 
what stiff answer. 

Cunayou said nothing, his mouth being wide 
open. Presently he drew a long breath. 

“Tell me, why are you called the Yellow- 
knives?” he asked after a pause. 

“Many miles from here there is a big river” 
(he meant the Coppermine), “where strange 
stuff that is hard, but not so hard as stone, 
sticks out of the ground. My tribe has gone 
there for many summers, to make pots and 
arrow-heads and knives. The stuff is of a 
yellow color, and that is why we are called 
Yellowknives. Are you answered?” 

The fat boy nodded. He had had enough 
for one night, and just then in the silence out- 
side sounded a queer, shrill, almost human 
scream. Cunayou would have started had it 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


119 


not been for his training with Keepatis, but 
now he knew that somewhere near by a rabbit 
was dangling from a strand of copper wire 
four feet in the air. That night he did not say 
anything more. He liked the taste of cooked 
rabbit, but he never could get accustomed to 
that scream. 


CHAPTER X 


T HE routine of travel established itself 
very soon, and it is important that one 
understands just how the boys regarded 
Sachinnie. Between the hunter and them- 
selves there was the difference of Indian and 
Eskimo. They were not afraid of him, but 
did not trust him quite completely. No Es- 
kimo puts entire confidence in any Yellow- 
knife. Sachinnie was, it is true, very wise in 
the woods, but on the other hand the boys 
could live on the ice all winter without fire or 
water, and this would have been too much for 
Sachinnie. The latter, for instance, could 
never have walked up to a white bear and 
killed him with a spear, while Keleepeles was 
quite ready to try it. Eskimo life called for 
more sheer courage than did that of the Indian, 
and every Yellowknife knew it; and, besides 
this, the boys had a sturdy, self-reliant inde- 
pendence that commanded respect. In the 
120 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


121 


back of his head Sachinnie wondered whether 
they were forerunners of a tribe that was tired 
of life on the ice and now sought new hunting- 
grounds. If so it might be a serious thing for 
the Yellowknives. 

It fell on a day in June that they left salt 
water and struck into a small chain of lakes, 
leading to the Quoich River. Here Cunayou 
noted the growth of flowers that sprang up 
on the bare tundra. Mosses were in bloom 
and a coarse, stunted anemone with its lilac 
blossom. At the edges of dwindling snow 
patches were snow forget-me-nots, shaped 
like those we know, but white. The wild 
crocus, yellow streaked with red, dotted the 
higher ground, while in the hollows Cunayou 
bent over the scarlet tulip with its feathery 
edges. Here and there were small wild roses 
that filled him with wonder and pricked his 
fingers. He was amazed, just as any fellow 
would be on seeing flowers for the first time 
in his life. They seemed like spirits, very 
beautiful and tender. 

They were paddling very gently and close 


122 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


to sho're, when Sachinnie, who was a little 
ahead, suddenly backed water and pointed, 
and on a low point, with its long neck thrust 
straight out in the most enquiring manner pos- 
sible, Cunayou saw his first trumpeter swan. 

It is the custom of these great birds to sep- 
arate into pairs when they arrive in the North, 
and seek, each pair, some little lake on the 
shore of which they build their nest. Nature 
has given them a piercing sight, and an ex- 
traordinary power of hearing, but very little 
sense of smell, so that the travelers, approach- 
ing slowly and close under the land, got very 
near without being seen. 

The trumpeter is white, with black tips to 
his wings, a few 1 black feathers in his tail, 
black mandible and feet, and reddish eyes, — 
a big bird and strong, which, with his gray and 
blue-black brothers seeks in his flight the 
upper air, and travels faster than an express 
train hour after hour. He is wonderful in 
the air or water, but on the land is somewhat 
naturally a bit of a fool, and builds a nest — 
if you can call it a nest— out of a few sticks, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


123 


in which the lady of the house sits with an 
air of proud suspicion. That is what the boys 
saw, — a long neck, small arrow-shaped head, 
and shining black beak, standing straight up 
out of a large handful of short sticks, lined 
with a little moss and soft down from the birds’ 
own breasts. 

Then, suddenly, she saw them, and, without 
moving, began a deep soft coo-whoo that 
echoed over the quiet water till there came 
the throb of mighty wings, and the male bird 
whipped across the lake, landed close to shore 
with a splash, and waddled awkwardly toward 
his better half. Instinctively Keleepeles drew 
his bow, pulling the stone head of the arrow 
back till it almost touched hiis swelling finger 
joints. It was good hunting. But in the 
same instant, Cunayou, his eyes full of soft 
pity, sent an imploring glance and shook his 
head. 

“Do not kill, brother! Do not kill them!” 

Keleepeles frowned, and with an angry 
grunt put down the bow. It was hard to 
refuse the fat boy, and after all there was 


124 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


food everywhere for the taking. Sachinnie, 
looking round, saw; that Keleepeles did not 
mean to shoot, and his canoe moved back like 
a dead leaf. All three sat so motionless that 
in a moment they seemed to be part of the 
shore itself. 

The two swans stared and stared, their 
long necks stretched and stiff, till, in a little 
while, they decided that no danger was near. 
Then followed a sort of conversation, and a 
rubbing of necks, which both seemed to under- 
stand and enjoy, till the female bird lumbered 
awkwardly from the nest and her lord, with 
a preening of shining wings, and a lifting of 
wide membraned feet, took her place, and 
settled down over the two great mottled slate- 
colored eggs, while the lady moved royally 
over the quiet water, fishing for shrimps. 
Cunayou watched it all and his eyes were very 
soft. Then he turned and sent his brother a 
quick nod of thanks. He found it curiously 
hard to speak. 

That night Sachinnie talked long about 
swans. He told how the male birds in a season 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


125 


of the year go to their council, — a gathering on 
a lonely lake where no female is admitted, 
unless by bad fortune she has lost her mate. 
Then the grieving bird may fly straight to this 
assembly and choose another husband, who 
immediately follows her and becomes a new 
father to the young. 

“The swan will not fight without cause,” 
went on the Yellowknife slowly, “and he lives 
only with his mate. But she will steal another 
nest, and kick out what eggs she may find 
there. Year after year they return to the 
same lakes in the spring with the young they 
have raised in the South, for they breed twice 
each year. It is clear water that they choose, a 
lake that has an outlet and is not dead. Most 
swans are not like the trumpeter, but are gray 
like a white goose that has grown rusty. They 
have yellow feet, and their breasts are also of 
a yellow color, and the middle of their eyes 
are black with gray around it.” 

“And their food?” put in Cunayou. 

“Their food is swan weed, and the peri- 
winkle and shrimp.” 


126 BROTHER ESKIMO 

“Do they go away, two by two, with their 
young?” 

“Not so, but before they travel south they 
gather at the edge of the bitter water to get 
shell-fish and harden their strength. It is 
necessary that they walk part of the way, eat- 
ing berries while they walk, for their young are 
not yet strong enough to fly. Then, in great 
numbers, they meet at the coast and become 
harder, and make short flights with their 
young, who till now have been very ugly, with 
legs and heads and wings and fat bodies, and 
hardly any feathers. The swan is strong, — 
hut not wise. In the air he cannot fight when 
the hawk or eagle attacks him, but flies in 
circles and climbs very high to escape his 
enemy.” 

Sachinnie talked like this for a good while, 
and the boys drank in every word. To Kelee- 
peles it was like rounding out one of the 
stories of which, from time to time, he had only 
overheard a few words, while to Cunayou it 
was all sheer delight. It is possible, too, that 
the Yellowknife was a little proud of all he 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


127 


knew, but, though every other Yellowknife 
hunter knew it, this was the first time he had 
ever had such an attentive audience. 

“Tell me more,” urged the fat boy; “some- 
thing about your tribe.” 

“While I was young and still very foolish, 
like you,” began Sachinnie, thoughtfully, 
“my father, every night beside the fire, told 
me about animals till by and by I learned 
how to skin and cut them up. In those days, 
and it was far south from here, when my father 
found a moose track he left me by the fire 
while he hunted, but one day I went with him 
for the first time. I had a bag of babeeche 
which is uncured hide, and in it was a small 
kettle, and Yellowknife tea, and my blanket, 
socks, and a bag of pemmican, which is 
pounded meal and grease, and around my 
shoulders was a caribou robe, and my tunic and 
trousers were of this skin. I took a little ax,’ 
too, and a tump-line of shaganappy, which is 
rawhide, and a knife, and a fire-bag with flint 
and steel, and my pipe. All these things I 
had, and I was very happy.” 


128 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou bent forward, his eyes glistening. 
“Tell me more.” 

“Always I walked three paces behind my 
father, to give him room to act very quickly. 
Not at all did I speak, unless first he said the 
word, nor must I cough or sneeze, but swallow 
many things that came up in my throat, for 
I was very happy. If there was an animal 
that I saw before my father I gave a low 
whistle, but even then did not speak, and in 
the middle of the day we made not any fire, 
but at night time I gathered dry wood, which 
burns without smoke, — for there must be no 
smell of smoke when one is hunting, — and 
started the fire and my father made the rest 
of it. Then again, every night, he told me 
about the animals we hunted.” 

“And then you killed one?” 

“Not for many days, for I was yet young 
and foolish, and not soon does a foolish one 
become a hunter, but little by little. In the 
morning I made tea, and my father followed 
fresh tracks while I stayed in camp. Not for 
any reason must I leave it. Then if my father 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


129 


killed he fired again, once, and I put together 
all that we had, so that when my father came 
back all was ready to be moved to the deer or 
moose. That night he told me how he killed, 
also many small things that make good hunt- 
ing. Then, by and by, I went ahead on the 
fresh tracks myself, with my father three paces 
behind. He did not speak any word, being 
silent like myself, but made a sign when I did 
that which was wrong. If more than one 
animal was seen, he fired first and I after 
him at the other.” 

“And then you were a hunter?” 

“Not so, for it was necessaiy that I went 
altogether alone first, and bring back some 
part — being the nose or tongue or eyes or ears 
or kidneys or heart — of the beast I killed. 
That night there was a feast with the girls, and 
the sign of the animal was made on my arm 
with gunpowder and rubbed in, and the arm 
was greased and tied with a rag. And then 
I was no longer a child but a man and a 
hunter.” 

Keleepeles had listened very quietly. He 


130 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


was vastly interested, but it all sounded very 
easy and nothing like killing the white bear 
in the manner of his own people. Here one 
could kill a long way off, and, if one missed, 
could climb a tree. His mind went back to 
Keepatis. Why should not the old woman be 
comfortable with her son instead of leading a 
hard life in solitude? Sachinnie might be a 
good hunter, and it might be the custom of 
his tribe to desert old women, but the young 
Eskimo did not like it. 

“And your father?” he said presently. 
“Where is he now?” 

“Dead for many seasons.” 

“Did be go by way of the moose sinew, as 
my father once told me?” 

Sachinnie nodded, and did not speak. He 
felt a little restless, and the subject was not 
pleasant. 

“And your father? Where is he?” asked 
the hunter. 

“On the ice, fishing, and hunting the square- 
flipper. His father is dead, but he went as 
a chief should go.” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


131 


“How is that?” demanded the Yellowknife. 

“In a big igloo that was built for him by the 
tribe, when he told them that the time had 
come. It was very big, and the tribe brought 
many skins and robes as presents. There was 
a great feast for the men inside, while out- 
side the women harnessed the dogs and waited. 
Many words were said by my father’s father — 
who was Tarpill — the Fishing-Net — to those 
who were to come after him, and no man an- 
swered back, for after this night he would not 
say anything any more. There was a hole in 
the ice for him to fish in, and much food, and a 
lamp and seal oil. Then, when the men’s 
stomachs and Tarpill’s heart were full, they 
said farewell; and last of all Aivick, my father, 
kissed him, and, going outside, closed up the 
door with a block of snow, and set a walrus 
tusk on top of the igloo, that all might know 
this was the place of death. Then all the tribe 
called out good-by many times, and Tarpill 
answered from the inside, putting his mouth 
near to the roof. After that the tribe went 
away two days’ journey, that the spirit of 


132 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Tarpill might not be hurt by the sight of man 
when it left his body. And so he died.” 

“It was the same with my father,” said Sa- 
chinnie, shortly. 

Keleepeles shook his head. “My father 
went, — but yours was sent. There is a differ- 
ence.” 

Sachinnie smiled, but not very pleasantly. 
“We have talked enough of these things. To- 
morrow we reach the place where I have set 
traps. Let us sleep.” 

Silence fell in the tepee. Cunayou dropped 
into dreamland at once, and saw a large 
number of remarkable and interesting things, 
but Keleepeles lay awake. His brain was very 
busy. Sachinnie was the only man who was 
not an Eskimo with whom he had ever talked, 
and he studied the Yellowknife just as closely 
as he studied every new and strange animal. 
He noticed that his neck and body and hands 
were bony and rather thin, and very unlike 
those of an Eskimo, also that his skin was al- 
ways dry and never oily. He did not quite like 
the way Sachinnie smiled. It was true that the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 133 

boys could turn back at any moment, but this 
would mean missing a deal of useful informa- 
tion, which was the object of the whole jour- 
ney. Then the vision of Keepatis came before 
him, and he dropped into a restless slumber. 
The last thing he remembered was getting a 
queer idea that when they next saw Keepatis 
it would be in a curious and unexpected way. 


CHAPTER XI 


I T seemed, next day, that luck was against 
Sachinnie. Out of the four traps that he 
visited, three were unsprung, while the fourth 
held in its steel teeth a tiny blood-stained 
ball that the hunter examined closely and 
exhibited to the boys. He did not swear, for 
one of the peculiarities of all Indian languages 
is that they contain no oaths; and perhaps, 
too, a man becomes more self-controlled in 
the wilderness. 

“What is it?” Keleepeles was intensely 
curious. 

“The foot of an otter. He is very quick 
and can spring nearly as fast as a trap. Also, 
there has been a fight.” 

The boys looked, but could see nothing 
except some upturned dead leaves and a few 
drops of blood that led to a near-by stream. 

“It was Carcajou, the wolverine, who heard 
the otter in the trap and came to kill and eat 

134 


BROTHER ESKIMO 135 

him. He is a coward and a great thief. Let 
us find him.” 

Keleepeles stared, for to try to find either 
animal in this thicket seemed absurd. But 
Sachinnie stood for a moment, his dark eyes 
searching the ground, then walked very slowly 
toward the stream, and on one side of a faint 
and irregular track that the boys could hardly 
detect. On the edge of the water the hunter 
paused. 

“He has gone down stream like all others 
when they are pursued. There is not much 
water, and Carcajou, following him, has run 
along the bank — here and here. The otter, 
being hurt, will not stay under long, and Car- 
cajou knows this, for he is very wise. Now, 
listen. I can hear them.” 

Through the sparse and naked undergrowth 
came the sharp sound of combat; from the otter 
a series of shrill screeches like an owl, and then 
a quick yapping as of a fox. These were the 
calls of fear and anger. Mingled with them 
the boys distinguished a coughing bark that 
seemed half choked. 


136 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


“Carcajou fights hard in a season of the 
year,” grunted Sachinnie. “Tread softly and 
come.” 

A hundred yards away the travelers peered 
over the edge of a low bank at a stretch of wet 
sand, where otter and wolverine were locked 
in battle. At first sight it seemed that the 
former was overmatched, so great was the 
difference in weight. The wolverine, stout 
and broad, fought like a bear, using his great 
strength to the utmost, while the otter, slim 
and sleek, met him with amazing swiftness. 
Over and over they rolled. Soon the otter’s 
glossy fur became streaked with blood, drawn 
by his enemy’s sharp claws, but always like 
a twisting arrow he darted back to the attack. 

“It is the season of breeding, and their 
young ones are not far off,” said Sachinnie, 
under his breath. “At this time all animals 
fight hard.” 

Keleepeles stood motionless. He had 
never seen a wolverine before. Now he got 
glimpses of a black pointed nose, small brown 
eyes, short round ears and sturdy legs. The 



“It is nearly done,” 


said Sachinnie 



























BROTHER ESKIMO 


137 


back was dark, the head a light brown, the 
skull sharp and rather flat. Strength was 
in every line and curve of the beast, and his 
long hair seemed to wrap him in safety like 
a blanket. Where the otter was graceful, he 
was clumsy, but he fought with a grim deter- 
mination, punctuating his attacks with a rapid 
wolf -like yapping. 

Against this strength the otter battled 
bravely, his lifted lips showing the black roof 
of his mouth. It seemed that he was deter- 
mined the wolverine should not approach a 
certain spot, and constantly thrust his smooth 
body in front of an opening in the bank left 
by the receding stream. His left fore leg 
being limp, he jerked it up, wincing every 
time the weight of his antagonist drove it into 
the sharp sand. He was a big dog otter, some 
five years old, and had large brown eyes that 
now were alight with fury. Presently both 
animals drew off and rested for an instant. 

“ It is nearly done,” said Sachinnie, evenly. 

The next instant it seemed that they leaped 
at each other as though by signal. Came 


138 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


again the snapping of sharp teeth, a whistling 
cry from the otter and they met in one last 
effort. Then very swiftly the teeth of each 
met in the throat of the other. They swayed, 
their muscles quivering, locked in their death 
bite, till, together, they sank to the sand. 
Came a twitching of limbs, and a sharp wheez- 
ing breathing, and gradually the sturdy 
bodies slackened and grew limp. Carcajou 
was foiled of his prey, but the dog otter had 
paid with his life. 

Sachinnie stepped down and stared at the 
torn fur, ripped by Carcajou’s sharp black 
claws. It was not worth anything in trade. 
As to Carcajou, his hide also was damaged, 
and in any case was too heavy and coarse to 
pack four hundred miles to the nearest trad- 
ing-post. He turned the two over with his 
foot, then stared hard at the hole in the bank. 

“I shall set my trap to-night and catch the 
she otter,” he said contentedly. “Her skin is 
not so large, but it is finer — and still worth 
something.” 

Cunayou looked up in sudden distress, and 


BROTHER ESKIMO 139 

was about to speak, but Keleepeles swiftly 
motioned him to be silent. The fat boy swal- 
lowed a lump in his throat. 

“Do we leave them here?” he stammered, 
glancing at the victims. 

“Yes, for the other carcajous. They will 
be gone to-morrow. Come, we make camp 
now.” 

Keleepeles followed cheerfully, but Cun- 
ayou’s heart was heavy. That evening the 
Yellowknife set his trap opposite the otter 
hole. It was a simple enough proceeding. 
Fastening the end of a light chain to the root 
of a dead tree that projected above the surface 
of the sand-bank, he attached the trap to the 
other end. As a bait he used a small fish that 
he netted after a few moment’s casting. Then 
sand was carefully scattered so that chain, 
trap, his own tracks and everything but the 
bait was obliterated, and all the time he wore 
a pair of deerskin mits which had been rubbed 
with the musk bag of the weasel, so that no 
faint trace of human smell might remain, 
When he was finished there was observable 


140 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


only a small fish that had apparently been 
washed up on the shore. The boys followed 
every movement with a steady, unwinking 
stare. They had never seen this thing done 
before. 

That night in the tepee the talk was about 
Carcajou, the wolverine. Sachinnie did not 
think much of the glutton of the North, — for 
so Carcajou is known. 

“What he can carry, that he steals, and 
what he cannot steal he destroys. He is a 
great robber, and the enemy of all things.” 

“And who are his enemies?” put in Kelee- 
peles. 

“The wolf, also the eagle, who seeks the 
young, who are six in a litter. These are like 
small dogs, whose claws and teeth are very 
sharp. Their fur is brown and like wool, and 
for three days they are blind and see not. As 
to the head, they are round; as to the legs, 
long. Their noses are black and often full 
of many wrinkles. For three moons their 
mother suckles them, and then they hunt by 
doing what their father does. But their 
parents bring food to the den. A great 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


141 


follower is Carcajou after those animals that 
kill for themselves; what is left he takes, and 
what he cannot eat he defiles so that none but 
himself can eat it.” 

“Where is his home?” Keleepeles was 
putting away many things in his mind. 

“In a hole or a cave or a bank of sand. 
When the fox leaves, Carcajou enters in. He 
can climb like a lynx, and — ” 

“What is a lynx?” demanded Cunayou. 

“In a few days we shall take one, and you 
shall see. Carcajou will drop from a tree on 
his enemy, or hunt him by keeping down the 
wind. He is very wise and strong and dirty; 
also he is mean, for he hunts when other an- 
imals are resting, four or five in a band, but 
often they fight together like dogs. When 
they throw themselves on their backs, then 
there is most danger, for their claws are very 
sharp. Also, they smell like many dead 
things close at hand. They are devils, not 
animals.” 

“Why?” said Cunayou, with a curious light 
in his eye. 

“Because they steal all things, — a rifle or 


142 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


snow-shoes or fishing-nets, and the fish that 
are in the net. Even they will steal traps and 
carry them away. They are very cunning, 
but also great cowards.” 

“Why?” asked Cunayou, again. 

“Because when they are frightened they 
hide their heads between their paws that no 
one may see them, or they will get behind a 
bush even though it be very thin and without 
leaves.” 

“And their tracks?” said Keleepeles. His 
hunter’s brain was busy. 

“It is like a wolf and a fox, but not quite 
the same, being more round than a wolf and 
more large than a fox. It is also like a small 
bear cub, and there are pads underneath that 
make a mark in the snow. They do not walk, 
but trot, and a good runner can catch them. 
Carcajou is a glutton, and his stomach is al- 
ways in his brain, and in a season of the year he 
goes mad. The Yellowknife does not eat 
him, but there is not anything he will not eat. 
I have spoken too much, and my eyes are 
heavy. To-morrow we shall have a she otter.” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


143 


In three minutes it was very quiet in the 
teepee. Sachinnie and Keleepeles were 
breathing with the slow, deep respiration of 
tired bodies, but Cunayou’s eyes were wide 
open. It was curious how often he lay awake 
now, trying to sort out things in his own par- 
ticular way. To-night it was the she otter. 
Somewhere, just outside the overhanging 
bank a few paces off, was the sleek, bright 
animal with her young, waiting the return of 
her lord, and just outside lay the trap, cun- 
ningly baited, against the time when she would 
come out to seek food for her children. 

The more Cunayou thought of it the less 
he liked it. It might be the law that wild 
things kill and be killed, and very certainly it 
was Sachinnie’s right to set his traps where 
he would, but just now the boy was chiefly 
conscious of his own growing love for all living 
things, — even Carcajou, the glutton. 

An hour later a round oily face protruded 
through one side of the tepee, followed by a 
short, broad body. Then came the rest of 
Cunayou. When his feet were clear, he lay 


144 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


motionless for some time, while his pulse ham- 
mered in his ears. Presently, like an overfed 
eel, he wormed his way a few paces further 
and stood up. 

The sky was cloudless, and full moonlight 
lay on the silent land. The boy darted quick 
glances into the shadows, for where he came 
from there were no shadows, and with infinite 
care slipped very slowly toward the otter’s den. 
The air was mild, and strange smells came to 
him. Here, all around, were things of which 
he was only just beginning to learn. Car- 
cajou, who dropped from branches, and the 
lean gray wolf were both abroad to-night. 
The thought burned in his stomach and made 
him a little sick, but he did not hesitate. At 
every snapping of a twig he halted, his heart 
in his mouth, for he was going to do that for 
which Sachinnie would kill him if the Indian 
ever found out, — a thing that is a black mark 
against any hunter. 

It took him half an hour to cover the short 
distance to the sand-bank, and before he 
reached it there came to him a series of low, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


145 


musical whistles that sounded quite clearly in 
the still air. At last, peering over the edge, 
he caught the gleam of water. He was some 
eight feet above the dead root to which Sa- 
chinnie had anchored his chain. Leaning for- 
ward as far as he dared, Cunayou looked over. 
The end of the chain was out of reach. He 
dared not climb down lest fresh tracks on the 
sand betray him at sunrise, for Sachinnie was 
very wise in such things. Thirty feet away 
was the fish. Again from the otter hole 
thrilled that musical whistle. Cunayou drew 
a long breath, and, suddenly, inspiration came 
to him. 

Close at hand was a clump of black alder, 
so, choosing a sapling that branched near the 
ground, the boy cut it off and amputated one 
branch, leaving a rough hook with a handle 
some ten feet long in all. The fresh cut looked 
suspiciously bright in the moonlight, therefore 
he rubbed it with black, damp earth. Leaning 
over, he slipped the hook under the chain and 
pulled gently. The trap moved ever so 
slightly. Gathering in the slack, he repeated 


146 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


the performance, and brought the trap two 
feet nearer. In ten minutes it was immedi- 
ately under him, and upside down. The fish 
lay harmless and glinting on the sand. Then 
the boy waited as quietly as a dead rabbit. 

Presently from the hole protruded the sleek 
head of the she otter, and very slowly she came 
into view. After her rolled four pups, lean 
like lizards, and just about as active, long and 
thin with fur like silk velvet. To the water 
they ran, and there began a beautiful game 
led by the mother, in which all five flashed up 
stream like fragments of living, shining 
copper. Cunayou’s heart leaped, for the 
mother was teaching her young to hunt. 
Under water she stayed five minutes at a time, 
while the cubs dived and searched frantically, 
then emerged, leaping clear into the air with 
the drops flying from her glossy sides. Cu- 
nayou thought he had never seen anything half 
so quick, or half so graceful. 

Suddenly she darted up the opposite bank, 
and slid down into the dark water with a splash. 
After her came the cubs, whistling with de- 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


147 


light. It was an otter slide, of which Cunayou 
had heard Sachinnie speak, — but which the 
boy had never expected to see. Then the 
mother caught sight of the fish on the sand 
bank and dived swiftly. She came up on the 
near side without a ripple, and approached 
very cautiously, her small eyes very bright, 
her black nostrils very wide. 

For some time she did not touch it, but 
smelled about chasing away the cubs when 
they came too near her. She seemed ready 
to spring, and apparently perceived the pres- 
ence of danger. It was a beautiful sight. 
The evident annoyance caused her by her 
young was quite human, for they treated her 
with scant respect, and the fish looked very 
good. One of them was so insolent that Cun- 
ayou, despite himself, chuckled with amuse- 
ment. 

In the same instant sounded a whistle, but 
this time quite sharp, and all five vanished 
as if by magic. Cunayou rubbed his eyes, 
lay still for a little while, then got up with a 
deep sigh of satisfaction. He did not remem- 


148 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


ber ever having been so happy. But what 
about Sachinnie? 

For the next half-hour he was very busy, 
working thoughtfully and knitting his smooth 
brows. The dead leaves where he had lain 
were pressed flat, so he backed up and loosened 
them as carefully as possible. He collected 
the black alder chips, pushed them into the 
soft earth, and, retracing his steps, obliter- 
ated his trail as best he could. Just as he 
left the bank he saw a mink run down by the 
water’s edge. The fish vanished, and at this 
the boy grunted contentedly. 

It was a slow business to reach camp at 
his rate, and on the way he hurled his hook 
far into the brush, but once at the teepee he 
stood doubtfully and struck off again to the 
stream, this time in another direction, taking 
no care how he walked, and leaving many and 
obvious tracks by the water’s edge. Stealthily 
regaining camp, he listened breathlessly, till, 
with infinite care and inch by inch, he crawled 
to his place by his brother’s side. But for the 
rest of the night there was little sleep for him. 


CHAPTER XII 


S ACHINNIE’S breakfast next morn- 
ing was a gosling he had killed with his 
paddle the day before. Cunayou watched till 
the last morsel vanished, and the Indian, 
stretching himself, announced that now they 
would get a she otter. The fat boy gulped, so 
that Keleepeles glanced at him curiously. 
Put, being wise, the elder boy said nothing, nor 
indeed had he the faintest notion of the whole 
truth. 

An anxious heart lightened a little when 
the hunter struck off to the stream over a new 
trail, but Cunayou still felt rather sick, and as 
Sachinnie stood over the empty trap that now 
lay close up under the bank, his pulse nearly 
stopped. 

“What is it,” he asked, a little shakily, when 
the silence had become more than he could 
endure. 

Sachinnie’s face grew dark. “I do not 

149 


150 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


know. It is either a .wendigo, or more likely 
it is Carcajou, who, being wise like a devil, 
has pulled the chain and not touched the trap. 
The she otter has been here with her young, 
for there are many tracks, and after them 
came a mink, and on the other side of the 
stream is a new slide that was not there yester- 
day. But there are holes in the sand where 
the chain is pulled that I do not understand. 
Let us go up and see.” 

Cunayou breathed very quickly, till, catch- 
ing his brother’s eye, he gave one agonized 
glance, and motioned desperately up stream. 
Keleepeles’s brows went up and he was obvi- 
ously puzzled, but such was Cunayou’s un- 
spoken appeal that, like a good hunter, he 
asked no questions and acted quickly. 

“It does not matter. Let us go and see 
what is left of the other otter and the wolver- 
ine.” 

Sachinnie looked sharply around, but the 
boy’s face was quiet and untroubled. Pres- 
ently he laughed, a little disagreeably. 

“You will make a poor hunter if you do not 


BROTHER ESKIMO 151 

look close. Perhaps that is the way of all 
Eskimos.” 

Keleepeles smarted under his skin, and 
instead of answering walked slowly up stream. 
After a little, the Indian followed him with 
trap and chain. He said nothing, but when 
they reached the spot where Cunayou had 
tramped so carelessly in the sand, he stopped 
short. 

“Who is it that walks by night?” 

The fat boy choked a little. “I had many 
bad dreams and came here to drink. On the 
ice we use no water, but here I have a great 
thirst.” 

Sachinnie grunted and bent over the tracks, 
and without a word followed them. Back at 
the camp he turned and smiled, but it was 
not a nice smile. 

“It was in my mind that perhaps it was not 
Carcajou that saved the otter, but you have 
spoken a true word. I will get her when I 
come again. To-morrow we shall meet the 
caribou.” 

. Cunayou nodded. There were many more 


152 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


things he wanted to ask about otters, though 
just now it seemed a dangerous subject. An 
hour later, while the boy’s canoe was some 
distance behind the hunter, he turned and 
spoke. 

“It was well, Keleepeles, that you did not 
let Sachinnie climb up on that bank. My 
tracks were there, though I tried to wipe them 
out; so, fearing many things, I made other 
tracks that we found.” 

“But the next time, let it be my trap and 
not that of Sachinnie,” answered Keleepeles, 
slowly. 

Cunayou’s mouth opened, just like a sea 
sculpin’s. 

“What!” 

“I was awake and heard you go out, also 
come back after a long time. I did not speak, 
not knowing what was in your head. Now I 
know.” 

The fat boy drew a very long breath. “But 
Sachinnie does not know,” he said faintly. 

“There is much concerning Sachinnie of 
which I am not sure. He tells us that which 
is in his head to tell us. I think he does know. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


153 


but is keeping it in his stomach. He is wise 
in many things, but has he not strangled his 
father and gone away from his mother? We 
are Island Eskimos, you and I, and boys; 
therefore we shall keep our tongues in our 
mouths and learn many things, till in a season 
of the year we return. As for Keepatis, — 
who waits for us, — she is more strong now than 
when she was left to die. Sachinnie knows 
this too, and it is well not to talk too much of 
the mother to her son. I have spoken.” 

For a while Cunayou did not answer, having 
that wherewith to keep himself busy, so he 
paddled a mile before his tongue worked loose 
in his mouth. 

“Sachinnie said it was a wendigo or a wol- 
verine that moved his trap. What is a 
wendigo?” 

“An animal into which has entered the evil 
spirit of a man.” 

“But we have no wendigos on the ice.” 

“Because amongst the Island Eskimos 
there are no evil spirits,” grunted Keleepeles 
contentedly, and relapsed into silence. 

Now, whatever the hoys may have thought, 


154 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


or whatever Sachinnie may, as Keleepeles put 
it, have kept in his stomach, none of them 
betrayed any but the best of feelings. From 
all appearances they were still the closest 
friends, and since they approached the country 
of the caribou, the Yellowknife cleaned his 
rifle with great care, and Keleepeles did a lot 
of practising with bow and arrow. 

There was much talk of caribou, for it is 
the way of the North to let the mind dwell 
upon that which one expects to find. Ke- 
leepeles already knew something of them, it 
being the custom of the coast caribou not to 
migrate. The latter is smaller and whiter than 
his brothers, living the year around on the 
northern edges of Hudson Bay and the ad- 
joining plains, waging unending war against 
the lean coast wolf. The boy told of these and 
drew a rough outline of their track. 

“The bull,” he said, “has a round foot. It 
makes a mark like a heart which is very fat. 
But the cow’s is more narrow, and both of 
them spread out at will, so as to cross thin ice, 
or ground which is soft. Also the leader of 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


155 


the herd is a female, who is very white and fat, 
and, having no young to care for, thinks only 
of the herd. She is very wise.” 

Sachinnie nodded. “Up there you find 
only a few, but here, north of the land of little 
sticks, they are in numbers like the poplar 
leaves in a season of the year. The young 
are born in the month of melting snow.” He 
meant May. “They are pretty, with long 
legs, and slim bodies. For the first three 
months they are suckled, and for the next three 
they both suckle and graze for themselves. 
Two months before the calves come the whole 
herd has a fever to travel, and by many thou- 
sands they go north from the edge of the land 
of the little sticks. After a while the bulls 
stay and the females go on.” 

“Why?” asked Keleepeles thoughtfully. 

“In order that their young may be born on 
the big plains. Then in the month of berries” 
(he meant August) “they come south with 
their calves, meeting the bulls and all travel 
together. On the way north their feet have 
lost their scent, that the gray wolf may not 


156 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


follow and kill them. During this time the 
herd has a leader, but not before this, for a cow 
will not follow a leader before her young are 
born.” 

“Then the wolves do not kill the females?” 

“It is the law that they do not often find 
them, but fight with the bulls, and it is good 
fighting. The caribou runs loosely with all 
its body as though it would shake to pieces, 
and, if frightened, their feet close up very tight, 
so that there is hardly any split in the middle. 
All run at the same speed, young and old, and 
none are left behind for their enemies except 
the outcasts.” 

“It is in my mind,” said Keleepeles, “that 
Aivick told me that once he met a strange 
Eskimo from Lapland, where there are cari- 
bou, but that they are larger, and pull sledges 
like dogs.” Aivick had meant the reindeer. 
“It was a strange story.” 

“But a true word. Also, their horns are 
different, and branch out at once near the bone 
of the skull, while here they grow longer be- 
fore they branch, and have a shield point in 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


157 


between. So my father’s father told me, and 
he has seen many things. Still farther south 
from here there are caribou that do not leave 
the land of little sticks, whose hair is darker 
and more short; also they are more wise.” 

Now this conversation took place in camp, 
and when the boys started across-country, 
trailing Sachinnie, Cunayou promptly forgot 
all about it, for in a few miles farther inland 
the ground was covered with things he had 
never seen before. The North is a strange 
place, and however bare and unfertile it may 
appear, there is in its thin soil a marvelous 
richness. This, added to the hot blaze of the 
summer sun — for it was already the middle of 
August — gave to all plants and flowers a re- 
markable quickness of growth. 

In the swamps Cunayou saw the moon- 
berry, with its single yellow fruit on a stem 
amid four-leaved clusters; the eye-berry, which 
is like a small raspberry; the crowberry, in wet 
ground; the blueberry, higher up, on short 
bushes covered with oval sweetness ; the weed- 
berry, which Sachinnie picked for tobacco; the 


158 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


cranberry, scattered over rocks and sand, and 
the poisonous bright red snake-berry, nodding 
on its slender stalk. Then, too, there was the 
dwarf saskatoon along the creek beds, and 
dwarf raspberries that had survived the intense 
frost of winter. Out on the plain was wild 
tea, a low stunted growth with velvety pointed 
leaves, whitish bloom, and a delicious odor. 
And highest of all the mosses, the coarse green 
ground plant, with tiny plum-coloured blos- 
soms, that were like little brooms, and on top 
of it the gray caribou moss in tufty clumps. 
On the north side the rocks were bare, but 
on their more sheltered slopes Cunayou found 
thick patches of lichens, black where they were 
young, gray and cup-like later on. 

Can you see the boy in the middle of it all, 
his young brain expanding to each new 
wonder? It was exactly as though a fellow 
who was very fond of flowers, but had never 
been able to buy or pick one, were set loose 
in a more beautiful garden than he ever 
dreamed of, and told to take what he liked. 
Keleepeles was interested in all these things 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


159 


because they were food for animals, and it was 
useful knowledge, but Cunayou loved them 
because they were new and fascinating, and 
filled him with strange thoughts and imagin- 
ings that he had never felt before. It was 
hard to believe that winter would soon return 
and wipe out this multicoloured blanket. 

That day they did not find caribou, nor for 
days afterward, and it was when they were 
camped by the side of a lake which was 
alive with ducks and geese, teaching their 
young to hunt for food, that Keleepeles mo- 
tioned his brother to come and sit by the water’s 
edge, and, speaking slowly, emptied his heart 
of many things. 

“It is now three moons since we started with 
Sachinnie, and by the course we are still taking 
we shall not return to the bitter water before 
the snow comes. For many days we have 
journeyed with the sun, and it is time we 
turned to journey against him. Once or twice 
I have seen smoke a long way off, and Sachin- 
nie has been many hours out of our sight, and I 
am in great doubt.” 


160 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou was startled, for Keleepeles 
seldom admitted doubt. “What is in the 
mind of the Yellowknife?” he asked, a little 
nervously. 

“I do not know, unless it is that when we 
are a long way from the bitter water he will 
give us to his tribe as prisoners.” 

The eyes of the fat boy bulged. “But 
why?” 

“Again I do not know, except that the 
Yellowknives fear the Eskimos, and it might 
be a great thing for Sachinnie to say to his 
tribe, ‘Here are two from the islands; take 
them.’ ” 

“Oh!” said Cunayou, under his breath. 

“That is the way of it,” went on the bigger 
boy slowly, “and there are many things in 
my mind. The caribou run in great numbers 
not far from here, and I would see them. 
Very soon the birds and animals will prepare 
for the winter, and I would see that also. I 
am not afraid of Sachinnie or his rifle. Now, 
tell me what is in your stomach concerning 
this matter?” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


161 


“It is many days’ journey to the camp of 
Keepatis. Do you know the way if we take 
it alone?” 

Keleepeles nodded. “Where once I have 
been, there again can I go, and all waters 
run to the sea. There is another matter. 
Sachinnie has caught but little fur, which is 
poor, being taken too late in the spring, and his 
traps are many times empty. The skins we 
shall choose for Allegoo, our mother, are in his 
hands, and there he would have them remain.” 

Cunayou grinned. “The eyes of all Yellow- 
knives close at the end of the day. It is very 
easy.” 

“Perhaps, but there is much else to remem- 
ber. For another moon we may stay with 
Sachinnie, but at the end of it we must be lost. 
If it is in his mind that we have run away, he 
will look and perhaps find us, but if to him 
we are lost he will not care, but only think that 
by and by there will be food for the wolverine 
and raven. So, fat one, put this away secretly 
in your heart, and it is well that we do not 
talk too much together, for the eyes and ears 


162 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


of the hunter are very sharp. See, he comes 
now, and steps so that not any one can hear 
him.” 

Cunayou glanced around and saw Sachinnie 
approaching rapidly. He seemed to move 
without a sound, and as he drew nearer the 
boys noted that his eyes were very hard and 
bright. He sent them a quick glance. 

“ I have come from the west, and have seen 
many caribou. They feed on the other side 
of the ridge. To-morrow morning, very early, 
we go north and then west to where there rises 
a small hill, and there we shall kill; but first 
there will be much to do, for we shall kill with- 
out weapons. The moss is good where they 
are, and they will not move. They are cows 
with their young and travel south to meet the 
bulls.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


C UNAYOU slept but little that night. 

He had asked Sachinnie how they were 
to kill without weapons, but the Yellowknife 
only smiled in his peculiar and rather irritating 
way, and told him to wait and see. The 
weather was very warm, so they did not put 
up the teepee, and lay on the moss. Cunayou 
was tortured by the mosquitoes, but the other 
two covered up their heads, and dropped off 
immediately. Sachinnie had allowed no fire, 
game being too near. 

Despite the mosquitoes the boy found that 
night very wonderful. The stars seemed soft 
and very near, and the still air was full of 
small noises that came from everywhere. He 
heard the twitter of sleepy birds, the splash of 
big fish out on the lake, and the quacking and 
honking of ducks and geese that were very 
busy in the dark. In the low bushes close by 
was a rustling that sounded like Carcajou, but 

163 


164 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


the boy now knew that Carcajou would not 
bother the camp when there were so many ten- 
der, defenseless creatures all around him. 
From across the water came a trumpet-like 
note from a male swan, who was getting home 
late from his council, and an equally melodious 
call from his wife, where she sat motionless 
and faithful on her slate-colored eggs. A 
mink darted along the shore, and very distantly 
there lifted the long-drawn howl of a wolf. 
At this Cunayou began to think of his team in 
the camp of Keepatis, and presently his eyes 
closed. 

It seemed but a few moments later that 
Sachinnie touched him on the shoulder and 
the three set out before the east was even gray. 
At the end of three miles the hunter turned 
along a broad ledge that ran beside a deep 
gully bearing east and west. South of the 
boys, and between them and the plain where 
Sachinnie said the caribou were feeding, rose 
a low hill. From where they stood only the 
crown of the hill was visible, but nothing of 
the plain. And then the hunter explained 
his plan. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


165 


“Here, on the ledge, with its point at the 
edge of the gully, we will build a trap. It is 
shaped like an arrow-head, and is of low walls 
of loose stone. The points of the walls do not 
touch, but are open a little, so that the caribou, 
when driven in between the walls, are pressed 
together till they reach the point where the 
walls are higher and they cannot jump, but 
must run straight on and fall into the gully, 
being pushed by many others from behind. 
It is good hunting.” 

Keleepeles opened his eyes, but said nothing, 
and for twelve hours the three toiled in the 
blazing sun. There was plenty of loose rock. 
The walls they built were hardly walls, but 
rather two rough lines of stones that nearly 
met just at the edge of the gully. Sachinnie 
examined it all and seemed satisfied. 

“Were there not such a great herd we should 
work longer, but it is enough. Now, come 
very quietly.” 

They crawled on their stomachs to the crown 
of the long, low hill, and peered over. At the 
sight the boys held their breath in wonder. A 
mile away to the south, the plain seemed to 


166 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


have changed color, from green to a light, 
tawny yellow. At first it seemed that nothing 
moved, but gradually individual animals de- 
tached themselves, till there were thousands 
and thousands of caribou, some resting, others 
feeding on great patches of gray moss. The 
wind came up very gently, and the boys caught 
a smell, faint but unmistakable, of innumerable 
warm bodies. To them it appeared that all the 
caribou in all the world were gathered here, 
though, as Sachinnie whispered, it was just one 
big herd of cows that journeyed south with 
their long-legged calves. Cunayou thought 
that the latter were too. interesting for words. 

“They journey always into the wind,” 
Sachinnie spoke under his breath, “and will 
not travel south if the wind is from the north. 
Their smell is very quick, and, though there 
be very many, each calf will go only with its 
own mother, and will find her if by chance 
she be lost amongst a thousand other cows. 
There, far off on the other side, is the leader 
of the herd — a big cow who is nearly white. 
To the leader they turn if there is fear amongst 


BROTHER ESKIMO 167 

them, or danger, and always it is she who does 
what is to be done.” 

“What is that noise?” whispered Cunayou. 

“The caribou grunt to clear their throats 
of flies that are snuffed in when they feed, 
but many of the flies remain and breed maggots 
in the caribou’s flesh by laying eggs in their 
skins. So by and by the caribou sicken, and 
their skins become full of holes, and they die. 
Always, also, they feed into the wind, that 
there may be fewer flies. Twice during the 
day do they drink. Should one caribou drink, 
all want water, and while the leader feeds 
they feed also. Of their young they are very 
fond and should a calf be lost or killed, the 
cow will hunt for it and even leave the herd 
that she may find it, and, finding it not, will 
take another and suckle it. Look now at the 
leader.” 

The big white cow ceased feeding, and, 
lifting her head, seemed to be staring toward 
them, as though warned by some faint, invis- 
ible herald of danger. Had the wind shifted 
then ever so slightly, she would have dashed 


168 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


off with the herd after her; but the wind held, 
gentle but steady, and the boys lay, hardly 
daring to breathe, till after a long investigation 
the leader resumed her browsing. 

“Come now,” whispered Sachinnie, and 
backed down hill to the ledge. Here he 
turned east, and under the shelter of another 
rise struck southward for two breathless miles. 
Then again he turned, but this time to the 
west. Presently he began to run at top speed 
toward a ridge that lay between them and the 
herd. 

“Hasten. They will smell us very soon; 
already they are frightened, and in another 
moment they will move.” 

Two minutes later the boys caught the 
tumult of countless hoofs, and, gaining high 
ground, perceived the herd already in motion. 
The leader had run straight through them, 
heading north, and fear was abroad in the wil- 
derness. Innumerable and tawny backs 
swung swiftly as there began that shuffling trot 
which leaves the miles so rapidly behind. 
There was a frantic calling to scattered calves, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


169 


a frantic searching for scattered mothers, the 
sharp clicking of a myriad of hoofs, and the 
whole great yellow blanket flung itself up the 
long, low hill that screened the fatal gully. 
Like waves they went, and like a broad stream 
they rippled, till, huddled together and crest- 
ing the ridge, they hurled on toward the trap 
of Sachinnie. 

The next moment they saw it, but too late. 
The herd split, streaming to right and left; 
and some there were that could not but run 
straight, owing to the press on either side, 
and it was on this that the Yellowknife had 
counted. Thirty or forty of them dashed into 
the narrowing wedge. Flanking this group 
were many who leaped the walls to safety, but 
three or four, driven so far that the stone 
parapet was too high to jump, raced headlong 
through the open part of the arrow-head and 
plunged into the gully. When Cunayou 
panted up he saw a cow and a calf, each with 
a broken leg swinging loosely, clamber up the 
opposite side, but down at the bottom were 
two cows, with heaving flanks and glazing 


170 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


eyes, who would never again taste the gray 
caribou moss. 

It was all over in a moment, and the three 
hunters surveyed their work; Sachinnie quiet 
and satisfied; Keleepeles tremendously ex- 
cited ; and Cunayou saying not a word. There 
was, it is true, much meat, and Sachinnie 
wasted little. But Cunayou in the back of 
his head could not feel that this was good 
hunting. It was fear that did the trick. Of 
course it would have been very much of a 
mistake for him to say what he thought, and 
even Keleepeles would not have liked it. So 
he spent a long time studying with a sort of 
sad interest the shape and body of the caribou, 
and putting many things away in his head for 
future use. Then Sachinnie roasted some 
steaks, and cut up a large quantity to be dried 
in the sun and be cached in a safe place he 
knew, against the time he should come this 
way again. 

Next day they walked again for miles, but 
saw not a sign of a herd. That is a curious 
thing about the North. At a given time the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


171 


caribou may cover the plains, and in twenty- 
four hours the whole country seems empty of 
them. And, though mysterious, it is just as 
well, for this is one of the means that nature 
takes to prevent her wild things from being 
wiped out. 


CHAPTER XIV 


UGUST drew on toward September, and 



everything that had life seemed to revel 


in sun and warmth. By this time the plumage 
of the young birds was more advanced, though 
the heavier of them, particularly the swans, 
were not yet ready for the trip to salt water, 
and it was when he was watching a young 
cygnet take a trial trip with its mother that 
Keleepeles got still more intimate information 
about Carcajou, the glutton. 

The boy had developed a keen instinct for 
woodcraft, and nearly rivaled Sachinnie him- 
self in the noiseless way he got about. Fur- 
thermore, he was acquiring that admirable 
habit of sitting or lying perfectly still for a 
long time and letting things talk to him. It is 
remarkable what there is to be thus picked up 
in two hours in any country where there is 
bird or animal life. The wild thing which is 


172 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


173 


watching you in fear is a very different crea- 
ture when he has become accustomed to your 
presence and then forgotten it. 

And just here seems a good place to say 
something about the way in which animals and 
birds communicate with one another. Five 
things they express — love, fear, anger, hunger, 
and contentment — and if a fellow thinks it 
over he could not express so very much more 
himself. There are some who would have one 
believe that all kinds of conversations go on, 
say, between a pair of foxes, but what actually 
takes place is just the operation of instinct, 
which in wild creatures is very remarkable. It 
brings the swan six thousand miles — half of it 
in the dark — to last summer’s breeding-place, 
and leads the she bear at a certain season of 
the year to her cave of hunger and darkness. 
It makes her lord drink through his paw, and 
hide the blackness of his nose when he hunts 
the square-flipper; it draws the broad-tailed 
salmon from salt water to spawn in a thousand 
running streams. It whispers to the otter to 
lay up food against the winter, to the arctic 


174 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


owl to pull out her own feathers to line her 
nest, and warns all flat-billed birds to harden 
their bodies with salt food before they attempt 
their long, long flight. So if instinct does 
all this, and a great deal more, is it necessary 
to credit the inhabitants of the wilderness with 
any other faculty in order to make them 
interesting? 

It was no doubt the instinct of the born 
naturalist and not that of the hunter which 
had held Cunayou motionless for an hour 
before he saw the cygnet, and in that hour he 
seemed to blend with the ground and bushes 
till he became a part of them. So when the 
cygnet came paddling cheerfully round the 
next little point, which was only two hundred 
feet away, the young bird saw nothing sus- 
picious in the roundish hump close up against 
a near-by rock, and just at that moment Cu- 
nayou caught sight of Carcajou, who was 
squatting equally motionless in a patch of moss 
between two low bushes that just cleared his 
back. 

The tableau lasted for some moments while 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


175 


the cygnet fed nearer and nearer the shore. 
A hundred yards away the mother bird was 
particularly busy over an exceptionally tasty 
bed of swan root into which she thrust her 
strong beak and tugged, while the other end of 
her stood straight up out of the water and quiv- 
ered in every feather as she pulled. Cunayou, 
glancing cautiously and without showing the 
whites of his eyes, saw the wolverine hunch up 
his strong hind quarters as though ready to 
spring, and, despite himself, he opened his 
mouth ever so slightly, showing a red tongue 
and small, strong teeth. Presently, as Cuna- 
you expected, the cygnet moved toward the 
shore, waddled a few feet up the smooth rock 
and began to smooth the new feathers on its 
round, pink stomach. He was n’t a pretty 
bird, for he was overly fat and only half 
feathered and had, so to speak, only his under- 
clothes on, but he was very proud and fairly 
strong so seemed rather pleased with himself. 
To Carcajou he looked very good to eat, — so 
good, in fact, that just at this moment, the 
glutton made a serious mistake, and, half 


176 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


rising, opened his mouth very wide, and it hap- 
pened that in the same instant the cygnet saw 
him. 

It all happened very quickly after that. 
The cygnet gave one quick trumpet-like call 
of alarm and plunged toward the water. 
After it came the glutton who had hurled him- 
self through the air and caught the young bird 
ten feet from safety, but so fast did he come 
that the immediate result was a mouth full 
of tail feathers snatched from the cygnet, 
which made a sudden lunge to one side. There 
was a scrambling of sharp claws on slippery 
rocks, and the glutton bounced back. This 
time the cygnet, whose wings were spread out 
flat, met him with a straight driving hammer 
blow of a horny mandible that caught Carca- 
jou in the most sensitive part of his whole, 
tough body; that is on the tip of his soft 
black nose. The agonizing pain made him 
furious, and the coarse brown hair on his back 
stood up, bristling. In a flash the cygnet 
struck again, but, over-reaching, landed on 
the wolverine’s fur-padded shoulder. A sec- 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


177 


ond later Carcajou’s sharp teeth had sunk into 
the first joint of the bird’s long wing bone, 
and the cygnet was dragged toward the shelter 
of some neighboring rocks. 

Cunayou saw it all and reached for the bow 
that lay close beside him, when there sounded 
what to any of us would have seemed like a 
seaplane making a landing. Came a sharp 
whistling of mighty wings, then a splash as 
though a barrel of flour had fallen off a bridge. 
The old swan lighted at the water’s edge, and 
with a sudden beating of wings flung herself 
at the glutton. Like those of a trip-hammer 
were the blows of her beak, and every time she 
curved her long, strong neck the attack took 
on more power. Carcajou could do but little, 
and that was not enough to ward off this re- 
vengeful enemy. Once he broke loose, only 
to be swept off his feet, and rolled over and 
over by the sweep of a great pinion and 
stabbed mercilessly again and again. And 
all the time there sounded the high, piercing, 
flute-like call of the trumpeter swan. Pres- 
ently the glutton, receiving punishment every 


178 BROTHER ESKIMO 

foot of the way, crawled between two large 
stones to safety. Here he lay, showing his 
red tongue, his whole body shaking with pain 
and anger, while at the water’s edge there 
was a rubbing of loving necks and a soft 
sound that was unmistakable in its tender- 
ness, till the two great birds, one trailing 
loose an injured wing, moved royally around 
the point and out of sight. 

Cunayou stared thoughtfully toward camp. 
It had been a great afternoon and he had seen 
just exactly the sort of thing that interested 
him most. It was a sort of reward for silence. 
He was glad the cygnet had got off, and not 
a bit sorry for the wolverine. The boy did 
not like Carcajou, because he was a thief and 
dirty and had a bad reputation, so after the 
two swans sailed away he had thrown stones at 
the glutton and addressed him in Eskimo, 
using all kinds of words that a fellow does not 
use when addressing a friend. 

But, now that he came to think of it, Car- 
cajou had been following the law of eat and 
be eaten, so it seemed unfair to despise him 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


179 


because he happened to be doing the only 
thing he knew how to do. From that the boy’s 
mind went on to Sachinnie, and what might 
be in the back of Sachinnie’s head. The re- 
flection was making him rather uncomfortable 
when he saw Keleepeles’s broad figure on top 
of a little mound, evidently on the lookout. 

“What is it?” asked the younger lad. 

Keleepeles frowned, though he seemed 
rather relieved. “Where have you been since 
the sun was high?” 

“I found great pleasure. There was a wol- 
verine and two swans — ” 

“I found something else,” interrupted the 
other. “Come — I would talk with you.” 

They sat beside each other on a little knoll 
in full sight of Sachinnie who was smoking a 
thoughtful pipe beside the fire he had just 
rekindled. Keleepeles glanced swiftly at the 
hunter. 

“You will not turn and look at Sachinnie 
while I talk to you, and between us it will 
be as though we spoke of that which does not 
matter,” he began very quietly. “But it does 


180 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


matter, so see if you can hide your thoughts 
behind the fatness of your face.” 

“Let us talk in some other place.” Cu- 
nayou’s tone was a little nervous. 

“Not so, for it must appear that we do not 
hide anything from the Yellowknife. It is 
now many days that he has not hunted alone, 
but always has he taken me with him.” 

“It is true, but why?” 

“In a little while we shall come to that. 
Not once has he let me shoot with the gun, 
though I have seen him kill many things. 
The gun he keeps beside him when he sleeps, 
wrapped up in his blanket.” Keleepeles 
paused, then went on, his eyes narrowing: 
“For three moons we have journeyed to the 
west. Always we have gone up the streams 
which got smaller, but now are bigger as we 
follow them.” 

“Why?” demanded Cunayou, puzzled. 

“Because they are farther from our big sea 
water, and run the other way.” 

There was a moment’s silence after this. 
The younger boy felt suddenly uncomfortable, 
as though something he had put away in the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 181 

back of his head now moved forward and took 
on an ugly shape. Keleepeles shot another 
glance at the Yellowknife, and his brows 
wrinkled. He was deep in thought. 

“It is nearly two moons since I told you 
that perhaps Sachinnie had a crooked heart. 
Yesterday when we were together a long way 
from here, he made a little fire of dry wood, 
and when it had burned bright he put upon 
it wet moss, and there came a smoke that went 
up like a thin tree into the sky. Then he took 
his coat and covered it while I could count 
five, and stopped the smoke, till, when he took 
it away, the smoke went up again like a little 
gray cloud. This he did four times and 
said not anything at all. When it was finished 
I looked very hard, and a very long way off I 
saw another smoke which made likewise four 
small clouds. So I asked Sachinnie what it 
meant and he told me that a long way off were 
some Yellowknives whom he would see in four 
months. n 

Cunayou stirred restlessly. “What do you 
say it meant?” 

“Four days,” answered his brother slowly. 


182 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Despite himself the fat boy felt a sudden 
distress. “You think that Sachinnie is taking 
us to his tribe — as — as prisoners ?” 

Keleepeles nodded, his black eyes suddenly 
very hard. 

“But Sachinnie is my brother.” 

“Not under his skin,” said the older boy, 
gruffly. “The needle of Keepatis did not go 
deep enough. 

“But the Yellowknives are afraid of the 
Eskimo.” 

“A whole tribe does not fear two boys.” 

“Then let us go back very quickly and take 
the gun of Sachinnie, without which he will be 
like a child,” blurted Cunayou, with decision. 

“We shall go at a certain hour, taking not 
anything except that which is our own, and no 
gun.” 

“But why? Sachinnie will follow and kill 
us a long way off. 

“Because a hunter does not steal like Carca- 
jou. The Yellowknife may follow, but he will 
not see us. Now listen: In the next days we 
shall talk only about animals, till on a night, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


183 


so soon as Sachinnie is asleep, we shall go in 
one canoe, having first broken his canoe, so 
that for some time he will be mending it.” 

“But where shall we go?” 

“Where the water runs. And when Sachin- 
nie comes after us we will play a small game 
with the Yellowknife. Until that hour you 
do not know anything. I have spoken.” 

Cunayou nodded, but did not speak, and the 
two boys walked carelessly into camp. Sa- 
chinnie glanced at them without suspicion. 
He seemed well content about something, — 
as indeed he was, for some twenty miles away 
was a band of Yellowknives who loafed 
through the sunshiny weather till it should 
please the hunter to join them with his cap- 
tives. There was no particular reason why 
the thing should not be carried out now, but 
Sachinnie had his own way of doing things 
and there was no hurry. It was a matter of 
pride with him that, single-handed, he should 
make this valuable present to his tribe. 


CHAPTER XV 


T HAT evening Cunayou sat fingering a 
mink trap for which there would soon be 
use. He was watching Sachinnie while the 
hunter overhauled his scanty take of furs. 
Presently the latter came to one that was like a 
piece of a child’s stocking, except that outside 
there was the uncured hide, and inside very fine, 
soft white fur. And this, of course, was be- 
cause Sachinnie had skinned the animal by pull- 
ing the skin over its head, just as a fellow pulls 
off an undershirt when he is in a hurry. 

“Ermine,” said the Yellowknife, and tossed 
it into the boy’s lap. 

Cunayou fingered it, remembering that the 
little animal had looked like a big snowflake 
tangled in the trap. 

“He is a great hunter of small things, and 
mostly of the musk-rat. He will cut a hole in 
the rat’s house and wait inside till the rat comes 

184 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


185 


back, which he knows by the big bubbles, and, 
not content with one, he waits till he has killed 
the whole family, eating them not, but only 
sucking their blood at the throat. And while 
he waits he will stir the water so that it does not 
freeze, the house being thin on the south side 
and thick on the north.” 

“But he is smaller than the rat,” objected 
the boy. 

“It is so, but he has a bigger heart with 
which to fight.” 

“And when he is very young?” Cunayou 
always liked to know about the early days of 
living things. 

“There are six or nine in a litter, and they 
are like a piece of sinew, and brown, and not 
like an ermine at all. N or have they any teeth ; 
but their eyes open in a week and they are fed 
by their mother, and on the blood of mice which 
she tears for them.After a little they go to 
hunt with her at night when their prey is asleep, 
for when it is dark they see better than most 
things except the owl. They kill rabbits and 
young geese and ducks, but are in danger from 


186 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


the mink, the skunk, the white owl, and from 
crows, foxes, hawks, and wolves.” 

“But he is brave,” put in Cunayou, hastily. 

Sachinnie smiled in a rather peculiar way. 
“Yes, but he is always a child.” 

It was on the tip of the boy’s tongue to say 
that a child need not be a fool, when just at 
that moment he caught his brother’s eye. Ke- 
leepeles frowned ever so slightly. He had 
been watching the Yellowknife count his furs, 
and silently decided that if he himself took a 
mink skin and Cunayou an otter skin for Al- 
legoo, the thing would be about right. So he 
noted just where they came in the bundle that 
Sachinnie always kept in the coolest place he 
could find. Presently the hunter stood up 
and, shading his eyes, stared for a long time at 
a low ridge of hills that lay some miles to the 
west. 

“To-morrow night we shall camp there,” he 
said, pointing. 

“Does that take us nearer to the sea?” asked 
Keleepeles, so carelessly that Cunayou’s atten- 
tion was attracted at once. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


187 

“Yes, to a river that runs in the direction 
where we would go.” 

“But this water which for many days we 
have followed runs to the west.” 

Sachinnie glanced sharply at the young Es- 
kimo. “You are very wise. Perhaps the 
water turns again to the east. A river does 
not go in a straight line in our country.” 

Keleepeles bit his lip and said nothing more. 
F or weeks past he had noted that all the water 
they saw was moving toward the west, ever 
since they passed the ridge where had been the 
caribou hunt. And this was true, for that 
ridge actually formed the height of land be- 
tween Chesterfield Inlet, which Keleepeles 
wanted to reach, and the Backs River, which 
as every one knows, flows straight north 
through a chain of small lakes into the Arctic 
Ocean. But now, though he was quite con- 
vinced that the Yellowknife spoke with a 
crooked tongue, the boy only looked rather 
foolish. 

“Perhaps, I am still young and not very 
wise,” he said stupidly and grinned at Cu- 


188 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


nayou, who sat perfectly still and apparently 
had not heard anything. 

Sachinnie grunted and seemed to forget all 
about it, but for the rest of that evening he 
found so many unnecessary jobs for the boys 
that they had no opportunity to talk, which 
was exactly what the Yellowknife desired, and 
it was not till the sun went down that Keleepe- 
les sidled over near his brother and, looking 
directly at Sachinnie, spoke under his breath. 

“To-night,” he whispered, very softly, but 
very distinctly. 

And just at this point it is well to get a clear 
idea of what Keleepeles was going to under- 
take. He reckoned they were about two 
hundred miles from Chesterfield Inlet and the 
same from the end of Wager Bay. He had a 
canoe but no rifle, and did not propose to steal 
the weapon of Sachinnie. He had no map, 
but there was not a river or lake or bay or point 
which they had passed that was not photo- 
graphed in his brain. He calculated that he 
and Cunayou could make as good time over the 
water as the Yellowknife, but on the land the 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


189 


Indian could travel faster. It was yet to be 
settled whether the fugitives should strike out 
for Keepatis and the dogs or go around by the 
Inlet, but whichever way they went Keleepeles 
would follow the guidance of that wonderful 
instinct of the hunter which brings him at last 
through a strange country and over mysterious 
waters to the place where he would be. And 
just then he had a new idea, and, rolling over, 
blinked at Sachinnie. 

“To the Inlet from here — how far is it?” he 
asked. 

“Fifteen days,” said the hunter. “That is 
if one travels every day.” 

“You know the way?” 

“Yes, in the darkness of night; it is very 
easy.” 

“But it may be that you get sick or die, and 
how then shall we two return to the ice?” 

Sachinnie showed his yellow teeth. “I shall 
not get sick, but with my eyes shut I could 
draw a map of the way, so that it would be a 
fool who did not follow.” 

Keleepeles laughed in great appreciation of 


190 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


this joke. “Keep then your eyes open and 
draw it, so it will be the better.” 

There followed a little silence while the 
hunter scanned the boy’s animated face. 
There was no guile in it, and suddenly it struck 
Sachinnie that now if his captives did make a 
run for liberty, he would know exactly where 
to look for them. It was quite evident that 
Keleepeles did not feel equal to returning by 
the way he came. 

“You are wise,” went on the boy, “and I am 
young and a fool. Many things you have 
taught us that we knew not before. It 
is not possible that I myself should make a 
map, for the fingers of the Eskimo are too 
thick, but it is in my stomach that we shall 
take your map back to the tribe, that all may 
know how clever is the hand of Sachinnie. 
The Eskimo hunters will look at it in their 
igloos and wonder and call it white man’s 
magic; but there is not one of them who will 
be able to make another. Make it now, for 
I have spoken.” 

“Sachinnie shook his head. “It is easy, but 
I have no ink.” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


191 


“What is ink?” demanded Cunayou. 

Keleepeles looked puzzled, not being quite 
sure what it was. Then he had a sudden inspi- 
ration and stretched out his arm. 

“Here is plenty. Take it.” 

Sachinnie grinned despite himself, and, 
opening one of the small veins in the boy’s 
forearm, let the blood fall drop by drop on to 
a flat stone. Into this he rubbed a little fine 
gunpowder, then, strolling to the nearest 
thicket, girdled a four-inch birch-tree and came 
back with a roll of bark six inches long. Flat- 
tening this out on the blade of a paddle, he 
dipped a sharp nail into his ink and set to work. 

Have you ever seen an Indian draw a map ? 
He does not use a white man’s methods and 
establish first of all various points and then 
work to them. On the contrary, he begins at 
the beginning and works straight on to the 
end. There was no going back and no rub- 
bing out, but the lean fingers of Sachinnie 
moved slowly and steadily tracing point after 
point and bay after bay, and stopping only 
long enough to dip his nail in the mixture 
which every now and then he made a little 


192 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


fresher from Keleepeles’s outstretched arm. 
He did not speak at all, but bent over his work, 
evidently thinking very hard, while the nail 
point crept along the shores of tiny lakes, 
crawled up and down rivers an inch long, 
marked portages no bigger than the head of 
a pin and rapids that the boys’ sharp eyes 
could hardly see. And when at last the 
Yellowknife looked up, there was on the roll 
of bark an irregular red-black outline that 
showed, much more perfectly than any other 
map that existed, Baker Lake and the Quoich 
River and many other streams and Chester- 
field Inlet as far as Fairway Island, which is 
of course in Hudson’s Bay itself. 

Keleepeles stared for a long time, and drew 
a deep breath. 

“It is indeed great magic. How wonderful 
is the eye of Sachinnie, and is this the way 
we return to the sea?’’ 

The hunter nodded. 

“But where, then, is the way by which we 
have come?” 

“There is no need of that.” Sachinnie’s 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


193 


dark eyes were half closed, but he was regard- 
ing the young Eskimo very keenly and was 
satisfied when the latter looked frankly disap- 
pointed. “Have you not come that way and 
is your eye so forgetful ?” 

Keleepeles sighed quite audibly. “I wanted 
to show Aivick, my father, the journey of his 
sons.” 

“Then finish it yourself,” grunted the 
Yellowknife with a discomforting little laugh 
to which the boys were now accustomed. 


CHAPTER XVI 


T HAT evening Sachinnie smoked in great 
contentment. It was quite evident that 
Keleepeles had no idea of the route by which he 
had come, and, thanks to the map, it would be 
easy to follow should the boys slip away. He 
had not been so contented if the whispered 
conversation which was going on a hundred 
feet away had drifted toward him a little 
more clearly. The two were sitting near each 
other, apparently talking about a flock of wild 
geese to which Keleepeles pointed as they 
floated on the glassy water just out of range. 

“He thinks I have forgotten the way to 
Wager Bay,” whispered Keleepeles, staring 
out over the lake. “Did I look like a fool?” 

“You did indeed,” said his brother, fer- 
vently. It was not often he got the chance 
to say things like this. 

“I tried to; so do you think that in the mind 
of Sachinnie I am a fool?” 


194 


BROTHER ESKIMO 195 

Cunayou nodded. “There is not any 
doubt.” 

“Then I am content.” 

“But do you know the way by which we 
came from Keepatis and the dogs?” 

Keleepeles smiled a little proudly. “Such 
a map as Sachinnie has made, I too can make. 
There is nothing I have forgotten. All the 
time we came there was that in my stomach 
which told me many things were to be remem- 
bered.” 

The younger boy hesitated. “Then do we 
go to-night?” he asked rather uncertainly. 

“If it is in the mind of Sachinnie to move 
farther west, then we go to-night.” 

A call from the hunter, which made them 
both start, signified that he was ready for his 
evening meal, but when the boys put food in 
front of him and he motioned them to eat, they 
found it hard to be natural. Cunayou’s heart 
was pumping violently, and he dared not meet 
his brother’s eye. Sachinnie satisfied himself, 
then drew out his pipe and squatting by the 
embers of the fire began to smoke. An hour 


196 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


passed and another, but still he did not move. 
Once he looked at Keleepeles and said, “To- 
morrow we go on,” but even after that he did 
not lie down to sleep. The moon came out, 
the wind died away, there sounded all those 
tiny noises of the night that are audible if one 
only listens for them, and still Sachinnie 
squatted, throwing now and then another stick 
on the fire, and continually filling his tiny pipe 
and pressing down the red man’s tobacco with 
a brown, bony finger. 

The boys glanced at him constantly and 
then at each other. Did Sachinnie know? 
And if he did know, what was in the back of 
his head? Never before had he spent a night 
thus beside the fire. The deep plans of Ke- 
leepeles all faded away. The boy looked at 
the canoe of Keepatis and his fingers itched 
for the paddle, but not by sign or glance must 
he reveal the bitterness of his disappointment, 
The bundle of pemmican he had been collect- 
ing, piece by piece, was ready at his hand, as 
were the short bow and a sheaf of arrows. He 
stared at Sachinnie out of the corner of his 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


197 


eye, but the hunter was just as motionless as 
though he had been carved from the yellow 
stuff that sticks out of the ground near the 
mouth of the Coppermine River. Not even 
a white bear waiting for a square-flipper could 
be more still. Presently he crooked a finger 
at Cunayou and the two went quietly into the 
teepee and lay down. Cunayou was just 
dropping off to dreams when he caught the 
faintest whisper. 

“Be not afraid, little brother, of anything 
that may come to-morrow. We go no farther 
from Aivick and Allegoo.” 

And then the dreams came in earnest. 

In exactly seven hours Cunayou awoke with 
a start at the sound of Sachinnie’s voice. He 
rolled over, saw that Keleepeles was already 
up, and was on his feet in a moment. The 
hunter was standing beside his canoe, which 
was already loaded for the journey, and peer- 
ing about, while a frown settled on his dark 
features. 

“Where is your brother?” he demanded. 

Cunayou rubbed his eyes. For one second 


198 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


he wondered whether Keleepeles had slipped 
off in the night, but there was the canoe of 
Keepatis just as they had left it. And just 
then from behind a patch of cranberry bushes 
a little way off came the sound of some one 
in great distress. The fat boy ran over in 
sudden fear. 

On the ground lay Keleepeles, his body 
twisting and his face swollen. His lips were 
half open and bubbling, and only the whites 
of his eyes were visible. He groaned once 
or twice, and began to double up as though 
in extreme pain. Tightly grasped in one hand 
was a cluster of bright-scarlet saken-berries, 
and on his lips were fragments of others he 
had apparently been chewing. As Cunayou 
stared, the fat boy’s heart seemed to stop. 
Then, stricken with fear, he shouted. 

“Come very quickly. It is the death of my 
brother.” 

Sachinnie glanced up and came on the run. 
Leaning over Keleepeles, he picked a half- 
chewed berry from the swollen lips and stared 
at the distorted face. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


199 


“It may indeed be death, but help me to 
carry him. Much tea may yet save him, but 
death is not far away. I knew that he was 
a fool, or how else should he eat poison of 
which I have told him many times?” 

Cunayou could not answer; he felt too sick 
himself. Between them, he and Sachinnie 
carried Keleepeles, who sagged to the ground 
in the middle, to the teepee and laid him down 
on his back. Whereupon Sachinnie rekindled 
the fire and made a copper pot full of red 
man’s tea. 

“It is necessary that he take all of this and 
perhaps more, or else he will surely die, being 
full of poison. See how his face is swollen.” 

Cunayou could hardly bear to look, but he 
took his brother’s head between his knees, 
while the hunter made a birch-bark funnel 
that he forced with a stick between the clenched 
teeth and began to pour. Keleepeles gulped 
and swallowed. Sachinnie poured steadily on, 
and the boy just as steadily swallowed, till 
the entire potful had disappeared. After 
which the hunter deliberately lit his pipe and 


200 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


leaned over his patient with a long, long stare. 

“It is well,” he said slowly, “and he can 
hold no more tea. If he be not dead in an 
hour the sickness will leave him.” 

Cunayou began to swallow hard and strug- 
gled to keep the tears from rolling down his 
cheeks. He loved this big, strong brother so 
much, and what would it be like to be alone 
amongst the Yellowknives. Sachinnie moved 
off and sat by the water’s edge to wait till Ke- 
leepeles should either die or live, and Cunayou 
was battling with himself, when from the 
swollen lips close beside him came a whisper, 
low but very clear. 

“Take your heart in your hands and be no 
longer a fool. I am too full of tea to say 
more.” 

The fat boy started so violently that Sachin- 
nie glanced up, walked slowly back and 
looked again into the puffy features. 

“He will die,” he said quietly, and strolled 
away again. 

Cunayou held his breath, till a moment later 
another whisper reached him. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


201 


“Sachinnie is a liar, like all Yellowknives. 
I shall not die.” 

At that the fat boy felt a little dizzy, but 
no more whispers came, and in something less 
than an hour Keleepeles began to roll over 
and groan and presently opened his eyes with 
the queerest expression possible. 

“I have had many dreams of many things. 
Where am I?” he asked, seeming to speak with 
great difficulty. 

Sachinnie lounged up and stared at him. 
“You were dead and came to life again. 
There be not many who do this.” 

“Why?” asked Keleepeles faintly. 

“From eating the poison berry. You are 
a fool.” 

“Without doubt I am a great fool,” was the 
uncertain answer. “My strength has run 
away like water and my bones are very soft. 
I cannot walk.” 

“Nor for two days can you walk. Sleep 
now, and to-morrow at midday you shall eat 
and the next day be strong.” 

Keleepeles nodded and shut his eyes. Sa- 


202 BROTHER ESKIMO 

chinnie waited a moment, and turned to 
Cunayou. 

“He is still very sick, so stay with him. I 
go to hunt alone. It may be that I shall not 
return till to-morrow and till then he may 
not eat for the poison that is in him.” 

Ten minutes later Cunayou saw the tall 
form of the Yellowknife disappear over a near- 
by ridge, and for the first time in weeks the 
two were alone in the wilderness. 

“Is he gone?” sounded a weak voice that 
seemed to drift in from a long way off. 

The fat boy stroked his brother’s face with 
great tenderness. “Yes, he is gone. Does 
the fire in your stomach still bite?” 

Then wonderful to relate, Keleepeles began 
to laugh noiselessly but so heartily that he 
shook all over. “Don’t! You tickle my nose, 
and my stomach is full of tea as a pool is full 
of water. My skin is stretched like the hide 
on our kayak.” He rubbed his eyes and drew 
a long breath, while the swelling began to go 
out of his face and there were no more bubbles 
in his lips. The next moment he jumped up. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


203 


“We have no time to talk, but in a little 
while I will tell you, for now we start toward 
Aivick and Allegoo.” 

Cunayou could not say a word, but only 
blinked and did as he was bid, while very 
swiftly, the canoe of Keepatis was loaded and 
the canoe of Sachinnie was punched full of 
holes. Presently Keleepeles pulled out the 
bundle of furs, and taking one otter and one 
mink skin he tied the bundle up neatly as it 
had been before. From the fire bag of Sa- 
chinnie he got one flint and one steel, which 
is permitted of all men in the wilderness, and 
put back the bag in the place where the hunter 
slept. Then he stamped on the ashes of the 
fire so that no trace of smoke came from them, 
rolled up the two sleeping bags, and when 
these were loaded, together with his store of 
pemmican, he worked the canoe into deep 
water and held her bow against the land so that 
Cunayou might embark. Five minutes later 
the teepee of Sachinnie was out of sight, and 
the boys were around a point, and keeping 
close to shore paddled eastward at top speed. 


204 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


It was not till an hour had passed that Ke- 
leepeles, laying his blade across the thwarts, 
leaned forward and spoke very briefly. 

“Do you remember, O fat one, what I told 
you yesterday ?” 

Cunayou shook his head. So many things 
had happened since yesterday that he was 
rather mixed. 

“I told you to have no fear whatever 
might take place.” 

“But you were very sick.” 

“And you, O foolish one, had great fear. 
But I was not sick.” 

Cunayou twisted round in the bow of the 
canoe. His eyes were bulging. 

“You were nt>t sick when your eyes turned 
white and there was foam on your lips as on 
a river when it flows from a water fall?” 

“I was sick when my stomach swelled with 
tea; but not otherwise. To-day Sachinnie 
had moved farther west and it was in my heart 
that this must not be, so veiy early I got up 
and, gathering poison weed, lay down behind 
the cranberry bush and swallowed much air 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


205 


and pressed the blood into my head so that 
my face puffed out, and it was as Sachinnie 
told us two moons ago when first we saw the 
snake-berry, that if a man eat of it he shall 
look as I looked. So then I groaned and 
crushed some of the berries and rubbed them 
on my lips and made many small bubbles till 
you came and found me. And Sachinnie, 
seeing me, said that it was death and called me 
a fool, and I was content, hearing him through 
much noise in my ears, for I knew that he 
would not go farther west this day.” 

Now this was a long speech for Keleepeles, 
but when he stopped to take breath Cunayou 
only gulped once or twice and in a rather thick 
voice asked him to go on. 

“When Sachinnie made the tea I saw him 
out of the end of my eye and drank it, though 
it was hot like fire and burned my throat and 
filled my stomach so that now when I move 
there is the sound of many waters inside me. 
And when he said that for two days I should 
be very weak, my heart was glad, and when 
he told me I was dead and came to life again 


206 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


I bit my tongue so that for the pain I could 
not laugh. Had you much fear, little 
brother?” 

“So much that my heart turned to blubber 
within me.” 

Keleepeles leaning forward, stretched out 
his arm and rubbed the wet edge of his paddle 
into the fat little crease that ran round Cu- 
nayou’s neck. It was the only caress he could 
give in a canoe as cranky as theirs. 

“When by and by we find Aivick and Alle- 
goo you shall forget it.” 

Cunayou shook his head with conviction. 
“It is too much; I shall never forget.” 

“It may be — but now listen,” went on his 
brother, becoming suddenly quite serious. 
“The great spirit put it into the mind of Sa- 
chinnie to hunt till to-morrow, for, believing 
me sick, he is not afraid that we run away. 
So to-day and to-morrow we go very fast, and 
stop only to eat but not sleep, till we come 
to a certain place; and when in another day 
Sachinnie also comes there in pursuit he will 
again think me a fool, and it will be well. 


BROTHER ESKIMO 207 

And now, little brother, we will not talk, for 
your breath is needed for your paddle, and 
the way to Aivick and Allegoo is getting 
shorter. I have spoken.” 

The canoe leaped forward at the last word, 
and the two settled down to a long, hard 
paddle that put the miles rapidly behind them. 
Both were good canoe men now. They had 
learned to use their backs and shoulders, and 
knew that about all the arms should do is to 
hold the swinging blade. Cunayou’s heart 
was too full of pride in his brother to say much. 
It had indeed been a marvelous journey and 
the end was not yet. His mind pitched for- 
ward to Keepatis and the pups. It was good 
to know that every stroke brought them 


nearer. 


CHAPTER XVII 


T HE hours slipped by, and not once did 
the blade of Keleepeles falter, nor was he 
ever in doubt as to the way. They passed por- 
tages where the big boy pointed without a word 
to the black cinders of camp fires around which 
they had sat not long ago, and when noon 
came they halted only long enough to eat a 
lump of pemmican. 

“To-morrow morning,” mumbled Keleepe- 
les, his mouth full, “we come to the place where 
it is one trail to Wager Bay and another to 
Chesterfield Inlet, and when that is passed we 
shall make fire, but till then it is well not to 
cook anything, lest the smoke betray us.” 

“Which way do we go?” asked Cunayou. 
“To the dogs on Wager Bay?” 

“It is in the mind of Sachinnie that I have 
forgotten the trail and will follow his map, but 

there is one in my head that we shall follow.” 
208 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


209 


They pushed off in a few minutes and all 
afternoon half -remembered points and bays 
dropped steadily behind. At sunset they ate 
again, this time raw fish which lay heavy and 
cold in Cunayou’s stomach, then went on 
through the night. At sunrise Keleepeles 
looked at his brother’s weary face and droop- 
ing body and spoke very quietly. 

“For an hour there shall be sleep.” 

Cunayou needed nothing more and curled 
up on a mound of moss. When he opened 
his eyes at a touch on his shoulder, Keleepeles 
had not, apparently, moved, but still sat star- 
ing back over the lake they had just crossed. 

“In three hours you shall sleep again and 
I with you. Come.” 

How the fat boy got over the next eight 
miles he never quite knew. His eyes were hot 
and the lids drooped over them so that when 
he tried to paddle he found himself swaying 
over the side of the canoe. The sinews in his 
arms burned and his fingers were so stiff that 
he could not straighten them. There was 
pain in his neck and shoulders and back and 


210 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


legs, and he moved as though in a bad dream, 
but ever as he wavered there came from behind 
the steady thrust of Keleepeles’s paddle be- 
neath which the canoe heaved regularly for- 
ward, and the kindly voice of his brother, 
encouraging him to further effort. In mid 
forenoon the elder boy turned the slim bows 
to shore, and, getting stiffly out, stared at a 
trail that led faintly to the southeast. 

“It is thus that one goes to the inlet and 
here Sachinnie shall think we have gone. 
Take no care when you get out, but leave many 
foot prints as you did on a certain night when 
Carcajou stole an otter trap. I go down the 
trail a little way to light a fire that shall smoke 
till to-morrow. Pull up the canoe so that it 
makes a mark in the mud.” 

In a quarter of an hour the canoe moved 
off again, and Keleepeles, glancing back, saw 
a thin wisp of smoke climbing into the still 
air. Coming down to the shore he had walked 
backward in the soft mud so that these, the 
freshest of all their tracks, could mean only 
one thing. There were plenty of signs that 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


211 


they had landed, but none that they had pushed 
off again. Cunayou, despite a great weari- 
ness, was full of new wonder and admiration 
for this brother of his. But he was so nearly 
spent that he could scarcely see, when, a quar- 
ter of a mile farther on, they headed in toward 
the trail to Wager Bay. 

“Here,” said Keleepeles impressively, “there 
must not be any signs,” and he brought the 
canoe broadside against a flat ledge of bare, 
clean rock which was well away from the usual 
landing. 

In an hour they were over the divide, having 
come not by the trail but by following a smooth 
ridge that ran a hundred yards on one side of 
it. Not a leaf or a twig was disturbed; nor 
was there the slightest mark at the water’s 
edge. The elder boy heaved a long sigh as 
they pushed off. 

“To that point we go,” he said, stretching 
out his paddle, “and then there shall be great 
sleep.” 

Cunayou did not answer. His eyes were 
shut and his head nodded. As in a dream he 


212 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


felt the canoe move beneath him, and without 
knowing it, began an uncertain stroke. Ke- 
leepeles, watching, wanted to laugh, but could 
only yawn. There was a murmur of water at 
the slim bows, and the fat boy felt the wind 
in his face and in a little while a voice from 
far away told him to step out. He did so, 
and stepped straight into the water. Then, 
without noticing that he was wet, he lay down 
on his stomach in a bed of dry leaves and knew 
nothing more. 

It was eighteen hours later when he rolled 
over. There was a smell in his nostrils that 
tickled them pleasantly and he saw Keleepeles 
roasting a fish on a small fire of dry wood that 
made no smoke. The fat boy rubbed his eyes. 

“Where am I?” 

“On the way to Aivick and Allegoo.” Ke- 
leepeles was smiling and looked very contented. 

“But how did I get here?” 

His brother chuckled. “Is the Sea Sculpin 
lost so soon?” 

“But where is Sachinnie — oh! — I remem- 
ber.” Cunayou said this rather indistinctly 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


213 


because his mouth was full of fish. “Why are 
my arms so sore?” 

“Because without knowing it you have come 
fifty miles in a day and a night. And it is 
well that we came, for already there is a little 
ice. Did it not go in the heat of the sun it 
would cut the canoe. But now the rivers will 
grow larger on their way to the sea, and we 
shall go with them like the geese and swans 
which seek salt food for their long journey. 
You and I also seek salt food, little brother.” 

Cunayou nodded, his mind now being quite 
clear. “How much longer do we travel to the 
sea?” 

“In one moon we shall find Keepatis and the 
dogs.” Keleepeles spoke very confidently. 
In the back of his head he hoped it might all be 
true. 

“And if we find her not?” 

“There was a time when we had no dogs, but 
only our legs. Have you forgotten?” 

Cunayou had not forgotten, but he was full 
of a great hunger for the old life; for igloos, 
and fishing through the floor, and bear stories 


214 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


and the crack of a long whip over the tawny 
backs of the team, and the bump of the sledge 
as it lurched over rough ice, and a thousand 
other things that are known best by the small 
brown people who live without fire or water 
and are not known at all by the Yellowknives 
or any other red-skinned folk. 

There was, too, something in the keenness of 
the air that made the fat boy think very hard. 
Two months ago he knew that Aivick and the 
other hunters of the tribe were then out fish- 
ing and hunting on the floating ice, while Al- 
legoo and the rest of the women finished their 
work on shore. By now they were all to- 
gether, dressing skins for winter clothing and 
killing geese and feasting, for food would be 
very plentiful — and of course uncooked. Cu- 
nayou’s stomach gave a little quiver at the 
very idea of it. 

Presently he got up, and stepping rather 
stiffly to the canoe thrust his hand into the nar- 
row bow. Pulling out a little bundle, he 
looked at it thoughtfully, unrolled it, and with- 
out a word handed Keleepeles a small white 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


215 


thing that shone in the sunlight. And while 
Keleepeles looked at it, Cunayou stared at his 
brother with big, round eyes and did not say a 
single word. 

“ Where did you find it?” said the older hoy 
after a long pause. 

“I did not find it. I made it.” 

“What!” 

Cunayou answered rather proudly. “It 
was from the walrus tusk we found in Wager 
Bay. Perhaps it is not very good, but the 
bone was very hard.” 

Keleepeles rubbed his finger on the smooth 
ivory. Cunayou had fashioned a tiny sledge 
and across it lay balanced the boys’ kayack, 
just as it was the day they found Keepatis. 

“I made it when I was alone, with no one to 
laugh at me.” 

Keleepeles did not laugh, but stared curi- 
ously at his brother who had such a wonderful 
eye and such clever fingers. The sledge was 
exactly as he remembered it, with one runner a 
little thicker than the other, and the kayack 
was the image of the one he had made, and both 


216 BROTHER ESKIMO 

of them were carved out of the one tusk. 
How many days, he pondered, had Cunayou 
toiled over this thing, so small and yet so per- 
fect? 

“I am a hunter,” he said slowly, “and there 
are many hunters, and they are all the same; 
but in our tribe there is not one who can do this, 
even though he be wise and of many years. It 
is for Allegoo without doubt.” 

Cunayou was very happy, so he nodded and 
his eyes were very soft. “There is so much to 
tell her that I have tried to talk with my 
fingers. There is also this” — he gave Kelee- 
peles a bit of ivory two inches long — “but I do 
not think that the left hind leg is quite right. 
Do you like it?” 

The big boy fingered gently a carving of a 
she otter, sitting up straight and apparently 
whistling to her pups. A queer feeling ran 
through him, for something in the back of his 
head told him that this was the kind of thing 
which was kept very carefully year after year 
and handed down in the family as a token. 
He also knew that, strong as his own hands 


BROTHER ESKIMO 217 

were, he could never fashion anything half so 
fine and small and perfect. 

“Are there any more?” 

Cunayou chuckled and brought out a little 
roll of birch bark on which he had drawn a 
picture of a walrus hunt. There were the big 
brutes lurching down a smooth rock toward the 
sea, their mouths open, their tusks gleaming, 
while behind them came the hunters with stab- 
bing spears. It was all full of life and mo- 
tion and the spirit of the chase, and Keleepeles, 
staring at it, felt his heart surge within him. 
Presently he looked at his brother with a queer 
mixture of pride and affection. 

“It does not matter if after this you do not 
anything else but only such things as these. 
When did you make them, for I did not see 
you?” 

The fat boy laughed down deep in his throat. 
“When you and Sachinnie were away hunting 
and thought I was asleep. But I was not 
asleep, for many animals walked all day 
through my head, one after the other, and it 
seemed that they looked at me and tried to 


218 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


speak, but having no voice they could not. It 
has been like that for many days, and at night, 
though my eyes were shut, I could see never- 
theless birds and fishes and beasts that did 
nothing but eat and sleep and fight and die, so 
that it was like a picture. And I wanted to 
make it and I have tried and — and — ” 

But at this point the emotion of Cunayou 
became too much for him, and because he was 
conscious of a multitude of things he could 
never put into words, no matter how much he 
felt them, he began to stammer and bright 
tears trickled down his round cheeks. 

“I am a fool,” he blurted, pushing his face 
into the damp moss. 

“Then I wish that I also were a fool,” said 
Iveleepeles, patting his shoulder, and sat quite 
still till the younger boy began to smile 
through his tears, just as the sun reflects 
brightly on a brown, wet boulder. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


S O began a journey which brought the 
travelers daily nearer the sea. Fear of 
Sachinnie soon ceased to trouble them, as it was 
too unlikely that he could ever find them in this 
wilderness. The approach of winter afforded 
constant interest, for by now all furred and 
feathered things were preparing for the bitter 
months. The skins of mink and ermine 
became soft and glossy, and the bright-eyed 
river folk were busy putting away food. The 
muskrat strengthened his house, and Carcajou 
found it harder to kill than in the lazy summer- 
time. The air was full of the cries of birds 
that winged steadily to the salt marshes, and 
up every stream great fish pushed their way 
to spawn in safety. Along the shores of 
shallow pools was a crinkling of ice, and in the 
scanty thickets came a fluttering of leaves, so 
that the branches began to show bare and 
slender against the gray sky. 

219 


220 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


On a day they reached salt water, and 
iWager Bay stretched ahead to the open sea. 
There were still two hundred miles to the camp 
of Keepatis, and Keleepeles, staring down the 
shining expanse, wondered if, by chance, the 
old woman had moved because there were no 
rabbits left. Then they came to a salt marsh 
that was alive with birds. 

As far as the eye could reach was what 
seemed to be a training-ground for feathered 
things, — as indeed it was. Old ducks and 
geese gathered their families and took them 
for trial trips high up where the air was thin 
and cold. There was a quacking and a honk- 
ing till the very skies seemed to have a multi- 
tude of voices. At times a flock of young 
birds struck off as though daring the long 
journey by themselves; but always they came 
back, for something had whispered that the 
hour had not yet arrived. The boys’ keen 
black eyes saw it all, and saw too that the 
white foxes were now really white, and that 
the brown hair of the rabbits had disappeared, 
leaving them like large, fat snowflakes. The 


And then there were found great arrow-heads of ducks and 
geese with the wisest and strongest bird at the front 
































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BROTHER ESKIMO 


221 


weather grew colder, till one day there was a 
flurry of snow. This false alarm sent some 
of the birds off, hut only a few. Then fol- 
lowed a week of mild weather during which 
the quacking along the shore got louder and 
louder, till there came a day when the wind 
dropped altogether, and sky and sea and land 
seemed to turn gray. And that night the 
pools froze over. 

At sunrise the birds began to climb, seeking 
a favorable current. Flock after flock went 
up* and then, so high that Cunayou could 
hardly see them, there were formed great 
arrow-heads of ducks and geese, with the 
wisest and strongest bird at the point of the 
arrow so that he might break the wind for the 
rest. All day they gathered in their strange 
regiments, and all day they disappeared like 
small black specks against the gray clouds. 
And when evening came there was no quack- 
ing or honking along the shore, but a great 
silence and another flurry of snow and a chill 
breath from the north. 

“Winter has come,” said Keleepeles, as he 


222 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


pulled his sleeping-bag up around his ears. 
That was the way of it all over the wilder- 
ness. The female white bear got ready for her 
winter lodging so soon as it should be ready 
for her. Big fish deserted the streams and be- 
took themselves to deep water. The caribou 
had moved south to the land of little sticks. 
Carcajou found himself a warmer den, the 
muskrat stuffed his house with food, and the 
gray wolf chose a lair where there was good 
hunting in the bitter months. Snow lay in 
large patches on the northern slopes of the hills 
and the boulders along the shore were girdled 
with ice. 

On a certain morning Keleepeles looked 
first at the water and then at the canoe and 
shook his head. 

“We wait now till the ice is strong enough 
to carry us.” 

It was very quiet, with more snow in the 
air, and no small birds in sight, but only the 
ravens who spend the year round in the north. 
All the short-beaked and cross-beaked tribes 
had vanished within a few days, the first to go 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


223 


being the last to come, — those that have small 
wings not suitable for long flight, such as the 
wrens and finches and woodpeckers. 

For days the weather tightened and 
hardened. The canoe of Keepatis being care- 
fully laid bottom up in a little ravine and 
covered with branches, the boys rolled their 
possessions into two bundles and, packing 
these with tump-lines that pressed close against 
their foreheads, set out along the broken shore- 
line. It was, they reckoned, a hundred miles 
to ’the narrows beyond which, if all was well, 
would be found the dim-eyed old woman and 
the young wolves. 

Two weeks later 1 Wager Bay shone like a 
sheet of clear glass and new ice stretched 
from shore to shore. By now the narrows 
were reached, and it was necessary to cross 
the four-mile stretch to the northern shore. 
Keleepeles sounded the ice, going out a hun- 
dred yards with a long pole, and came back 
shaking his head, with the thin sheet yielding 
in front of him at every step. 

“We must wait,” he said patiently. 


224 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou nodded. He was sitting on a 
rock, searching the opposite side with eyes 
that by now were as sharp as a microscope. 
Presently he pointed. 

“I see smoke.” 

Keleepeles stared for a long time and 
finally drew a breath of relief. 

“It is the camp of Keepatis. Having 
snared all the rabbits where she was, she has 
moved to a new place. It is well, and soon 
we shall see the dogs.” 

The fat boy was suddenly very happy. For 
months past he had ached for the dogs, who 
were his by right of capture and training. He 
pictured them now, wolves nearly a year old, 
strong of leg and deep of chest. But he won- 
dered if they could remember him, or would 
have only the smell of Keepatis in their nos- 
trils. Presently he glanced at his brother. 

“And having the dogs, when shall we find 
the tribe and where? It is in my stomach to 
sleep in an igloo again, for I am sick of Yellow- 
knife teepees.” 

“It may be one moon or two. What is it 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


225 


you long for and why are you sick of teepees? 
Saehinnie may be crooked, but we fed well.” 

“ I long for the ice,” said the fat boy, 
earnestly; “much ice and many walrus and 
square-flippers.” 

“But you have seen much, and shall you 
forget it?” 

“I have seen the glutton and the she otter 
fight,” chanted Cunayou, half closing his 
eyes, “and how the young swan calls for help. 
I know how the caribou cover the land and 
come to their death, and how the white hear 
battles with the gray wolf in a season of the 
year. All this and much more have I seen, 
and always shall I see it and make many pic- 
tures, but my stomach is sick for the seal-oil 
lamp on the wall of the igloo and the sight 
of Aivick squirting the water from his mouth 
on the runners of his sledge.” And having 
got off all this, the fat boy opened his eyes and 
looked rather foolish. 

Keleepeles did not even smile. He experi- 
enced a queer feeling that he had been listening 
to something very deep and honest, and that 


220 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


however Cunayou might wander in later years 
this brother of his would always be an Island 
Eskimo at heart. For such is the way of the 
folk of the real wilderness. A fellow born 
and brought up on the ice like Cunayou could 
never be happy with the solid land always 
under his feet. If by chance you ever get 
well north of Southampton Island and into 
Coronation Gulf or Melville Sound and see 
the brown-faced folk in their egg-shell igloos, 
don’t be in the least sorry for them or try to 
get them to wear American clothes, which 
would not fit and in which they would freeze 
to death, but remember that they are just as 
happy as you are and probably a deal more 
comfortable and as proud of their ice-floe as 
you are of New York or Cincinnati or Pough- 
keepsie. 

Now, of course, Keleepeles did not reason 
like this, but he was sensible and wise and 
knew perfectly well what Cunayou meant by 
his little chant, which indeed had made Ke- 
leepeles rather homesick. The last two 
months had been hard on him, who, being older 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


227 


and stronger, had taken on himself to do the 
thinking and deciding. He felt for Cunayou 
much as Aivick and Allegoo would have felt 
had they been rolled into one person. He had 
also a fixed idea that the name of Cunayou 
would be remembered long after his own was 
forgotten, because the fat boy would leave 
behind him many strange and beautiful things. 
And from all of this it may be seen that Ke- 
leepeles was not only brave but that already 
he was very much of a man. 

That night when the boys lay awake listen- 
ing to the sharp cracks that rang out like rifle 
shots as the ice thickened and expanded, there 
drifted across Wager Bay the faint yapping 
of a gray wolf. In a moment two others 
came in with their wild and distant chorus. 
And at that Cunayou sat up very straight. 

“It is my team,” he said breathlessly. “So 
many hundred miles have we come and yet 
found them!” 

Morning dawned gray and cloudy, and when 
Keleepeles announced that the ice was thick 
enough to carry them, there followed a few 


228 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


breathless moments while the boys rolled up 
their packs and strung them just below their 
shoulder-blades. Then very gingerly they 
set out, Keleepeles in the lead. The heart of 
Cunayou was beating very fast. 

Ten minutes later the clouds came very low 
and they seemed to be in another world that 
was made of whirling snow. The shore on 
both sides was* blotted out in a curtain of danc- 
ing flakes that soon turned the green ice to a 
carpet of smooth, dead white on which the 
footing was very slippery. Keleepeles pushed 
out his lips, but went straight ahead as though 
he could smell the North. Suddenly Cunayou 
whistled very softly. 

“What is it?” Keleepeles stopped at once. 

“There on the left — I saw something — a 
man, I think.” 

The elder boy stared, then in a flash pulled 
his brother down on the ice, where they lay 
no more perceptible than two hummocks of 
snow. Followed a breathless moment till two 
hundred yards away a tall figure became 
faintly visible, moving very fast. Like a 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


229 


dream it appeared and disappeared in the 
whirling flakes and in one hand was what 
looked like a rifle. 

“It is Sachinnie,” whispered Keleepeles, 
slowly. “The smoke we saw was from his 
camp and not that of Keepatis.” 

“But the dogs,” quavered Cunayou. “We 
heard the dogs.” 

“Keepatis is camped farther down where we 
left her, and Sachinnie is in between, waiting 
for us to come across. Lie still and move not.” 

Cunayou lay and trembled, while the snow 
came thicker and thicker. Presently Ke- 
leepeles motioned and they moved ahead, 
searching the white curtain with anxious eyes. 
Could they reach the dogs without meeting 
Sachinnie? They had come so far, and it was 
only a mile or two more. Keleepeles set his 
teeth and his hunter’s spirit stirred within him. 

“Let your breath be long and your heart 
steady and your legs strong, little brother,” 
he said over his shoulder. “We are no longer 
children, but men, you and I. We are not on 
the land but on the ice, where we would be.” 


230 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou only nodded and moved as fast as 
the shortness of his legs would permit, and the 
far shore was half-way reached when that 
which Keleepeles feared began to happen. 

Came a drop in the wind and a thinning 
of the snow flurry. Then a quarter of a mile 
away the figure of Sachinnie stood out clearly. 
Simultaneously two miles to the east sounded 
a sharp yapping. The dogs were on the ice, 
ioo. 


CHAPTER XIX 


S O began a tense triangular game which Ke- 
leepeles played with all the skill he could 
muster. The thing was to reach the team 
before Sachinnie. Taking advantage of 
every snow flurry, he worked his way west- 
ward, dropping when the air cleared ever so 
little, that the sky-line might betray nothing. 
But Sachinnie’s legs were long and he moved 
fast. The big boy put on all the speed Cu- 
nayou could stand, who panted close after him, 
his lips puffed out. Once Sachinnie raised 
his rifle and they heard the muffled report 
while a bullet cut a little trench in the ice at 
Keleepeles’s feet. The sound of the dogs 
became louder and with it there drifted in the 
cracked voice of Keepatis, who was screaming 
with excitement. They were now only half 
a mile away, but Sachinnie was nearly within 
range. 


231 


232 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


Cunayou’s knees began to give way. “I 
can run no longer,” he gasped, “let me lie 
down.” 

“Come on, little brother with the large heart. 
Aivick and Allegoo and the dogs await you!” 

Keleepeles jerked this out, though he hated 
to use up so much breath. His pack was very 
heavy, but he dared not drop it. And, too, it 
might stop a bullet. 

The snow flurry lifted. Two hundred 
yards off was the team, tearing toward them 
in full cry, the black noses in the air and each 
red throat yelping out a wild song. On the 
sledge swayed crooked old Keepatis, one 
withered arm swinging a long whip, while her 
cracked voice screamed encouragement. On 
they came in a yellow tornado, while the dogs 
went mad as the well-remembered smell of their 
master worked into their savage brains. 

Suddenly from Sachinnie came a hoarse 
shout. His arms went up straight over his 
head, his rifle slid off on the smooth surface and 
the rest of him disappeared. There was left 
only something that stuck out of the ice like 
two short, thick branches shaken violently by 


BROTHER ESKIMO 233 

an invisible wind. Then the branches folded 
flat down and there remained that which looked 
like a square-flipper come up for air. 

“He has gone through!” roared Keleepeles, 
with a triumphant chuckle. “His blood will 
now get cool.” 

“Do we leave him there?” panted Cunayou, 
aghast. 

“Without doubt we leave him. When his 
arms, which are wet, freeze to the ice he will 
pull himself out, and, having then enough to 
think of, he will trouble us no more. So let 
there be peace in your stomach ; for here is Kee- 
patis.” 

At the last word the dogs dashed up. Kee- 
patis, crazy with excitement, jabbered things 
past understanding as she rolled off the sledge 
and stood pointing a withered hand toward 
the head and shoulders of her son. 

“You have come back, O young and fat one,” 
she squeaked, “but who is it that shoots at you?” 

Cunayou pulled himself together and told 
her. “But now he does not shoot any more,” 
he concluded. 

“Then leave him — and come, O little part- 


234 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


ridge of my heart,” she urged. “Not yet is 
the ice strong, so why do we make more talk?” 

“It is a wise word,” snapped Keleepeles. 
“Let us go. But first I would say farewell to 
the blood brother of my brother.” 

With a broad grin he trotted up to where 
Sachinnie’s grim face lifted itself over the ice. 
The Yellowknife was quite helpless, and 
though his soul was hot with anger his legs and 
body were horribly cold. 

“Farewell, O great and wise hunter,” said 
the young Eskimo, with an impudent grin. 
“Many things have you taught us; and now, 
perhaps, though we be still but children, there 
is some small thing we have taught you. I 
take your map to the igloos of my people, 
whereby you shall be remembered, and often 
when the north wind blows and we fish for sal- 
mon through the ice we shall speak of Sachin- 
nie and tell of the night when Carcajou, the 
glutton, did.not rob your otter trap, and of the 
poison berry which if a man eat as I ate he must 
surely die. There is great wisdom in the land 
of little sticks.” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 235 

With that he turned and ran toward the 
others. Cunayou, shaking with laughter, 
seized the whip, Keepatis climbed on the sledge 
as it slithered round and for three miles they 
tore on, the team making straight through 
blinding snow till the shore darkened in front of 
them and the teepee of Keepatis became visible. 
The old woman put out a shaky arm, and her 
bony fingers stroked the round cheek of Cun- 
ayou. She did not say a word, but just ca- 
ressed him in a voiceless affection. And Cun- 
ayou saw by her gestures that Keepatis was 
now very nearly blind. The next moment he 
rolled off the sledge, and sat down amongst the 
dogs. 

It was a great reunion. The tall leader 
licked his face, and the others bit playfully 
at his clothes, all wild with delight. They 
were bigger in the feet, broader in the back, 
deeper in the chest. The long tails were 
thicker and .of .a beautiful gray white, the hair 
on their throats was like snow and the pointed 
ears were twitching with excitement. Full of 
life and strength and restless energy. They 


236 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


seemed to Cunayou more wonderful than any- 
thing he had ever seen. He longed to draw 
them and make an ivory carving of the way 
they had looked as they raced toward him. 
Then he became aware that Keleepeles and 
Keepatis were talking very earnestly. 

“He will not come any farther/' said the old 
woman, whose voice was very weak, “being a 
coward from his birth. And, besides, the 
dogs would kill him. Never before has he 
been so near the sea, which he does not like. 
He will reach the land and make fire with flint 
and steel, and not any of us will see him any 
more." 

“And you," asked Keleepeles. “Do you 
stay here? And how did you keep the dogs 
all summer?" 

“On an island near here. I lived with them 
so that they ran not away. It was fish that I 
caught which fed them; and as for me in an- 
other moon I shall be altogether blind and then 
die." 

1 Cunayou looked up and shook his head. 
“You may be blind soon, but you shall not die 


BROTHER ESKIMO 237 

alone. And how, being so blind, did you come 
to us with the dogs?” 

“It was not I, but the dogs themselves. 
Four days ago they were very restless, smelling 
something I did not know when the wind was 
from the south. It was your smell that came 
across the ice. And this morning they became 
like mad wolves, as indeed they were, so with 
great labor I harnessed them and got on the 
sledge, and they took me where they would. 
Truly, they are more wise than any dogs.” 

“It is very wonderful,” said Keleepeles 
under his breath, and looked hard at Cunayou. 

“And as for me, I have lived many years 
alone, and soon I shall not see anything any 
more; but it does not matter, for I have found 
that which I loved,” continued the old woman, 
and she too was peering at Cunayou. 

That night it was Keleepeles who lay awake 
in the well-remembered teepee, listening to the 
dogs’ whimpers as they went hunting in their 
sleep, and at daybreak he went out on the ice 
and stared hard to the west, till from the camp 
of Sacbinnie there came out a small black 


238 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


speck that grew smaller and smaller till 
finally it vanished round a point. That was 
the last the young Eskimo saw of Sachinnie, 
the Beaverwood, — Sachinnie with the crooked 
heart. He went back to shore with joy in his 
breast and a great hunger. It was after they 
had eaten that Keepatis spoke. 

“It is time that you return to your people. 
The ice is good now and the dogs are strong.” 

Cunayou glanced at his brother, who nodded 
ever so slightly. “We do not return alone. 
You come with us.” 

“Not so,” croaked the old woman. “I 
should be a stone in the sledge and a great 
burden. It is well with me here, — for a little 
while only.” 

“Allegoo will care for you.” 

“The Yellowknife does not live in an igloo; 
nor will my stomach hold raw meat.” 

“We will cook it for you.” 

“But have you not told me that with your 
people there is no fire, there being no sticks 
to burn?” said Keepatis, weakly. 

The smooth brow of Cunayou wrinkled into 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


239 


deep lines. It was quite true. His heart 
protested at the thought of leaving this ancient 
one who had saved his life. 

“At any rate you shall come with us,” he 
announced doggedly, “and for so long as it 
may be we will care for you.” 

Then a curious thing happened. Keepatis 
closed both her blind eye and the one with 
which she could see just a little, and, rocking 
to and fro where she sat, began to chant a 
queer song in a queer, cracked, uncertain 
voice. The sound of it lifted through the bare 
trees and drifted along the ice till the dogs 
pricked up their ears and wondered what it 
was all about. 

“I am Keepatis, the mother of Sachinnie,” 
droned the quavering tones, “and it is time 
for me to die. Many moons have I lived with- 
out my people, for many moons ago a mist 
came over my eyes, so that men looked like 
trees walking in the rain. My bones are old 
and weak, and my skin like the bark of a dry 
cedar-tree and the young men and girls 
laughed when they saw me. Then after many 


240 BROTHER ESKIMO 

days a boy came from the North and my eyes 
cleared so that I saw him, and I loved him and 
made him my son with a sign on his arm. N ow 
he has returned and my spirit told me that he 
would come, so, having seen him, it is well 
that I do not see anything more. I have 
spoken.” 

Then Keepatis moved stiffly, took the 
smooth face of Cunayou between her withered 
hands, looked at it long and very tenderly, 
and, without saying anything more, lay down 
on her side and covered her face with what was 
left of her most treasured possession, — an old 
red shawl. 

There was silence for some time and neither 
boy stirred. They were not afraid of death, 
for in the North death walks quietly and 
speaks gently and is usually not far off, but 
what struck Cunayou as being very strange 
was that Keepatis had kept alive just long 
enough to help them and then closed her dim 
old eyes. 

“How is it,” he asked under his breath, “that 
this happened?” 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


241 


“It is of the things that are known without 
speaking,” answered Keleepeles very thought- 
fully. “Because you were in her heart, she 
lived, saving her strength for a certain day. 
When she had found you again her strength 
went out like a little wind at sunset and there 
was none left. It is without doubt that she 
knew you would come.” 

Again there was silence, while two pairs 
of steady black eyes stared at the bundle that 
had been Keepatis. 

“It is in my stomach,” ventured Cunayou, 
“to make a carving of Keepatis on the sledge 
and give it to Allegoo, my other mother. Is 
it not strange that I who am so young should 
have two mothers?” 

“Perhaps you had need of them,” said his 
brother quietly. 


CHAPTER XX 


T WO months later, an Eskimo hunter 
might have been seen running behind his 
sledge far out on the ice north of Southampton 
Island. He was a big man and strong, with a 
broad, flat face and deep-set, dark eyes, and for 
the most part he looked straight ahead. Pres- 
ently Aivick, for it was Aivick, shouted to the 
dogs, who curled themselves up while he sat 
on the sledge in deep thought. He often 
came out like this, having nowhere in partic- 
ular to go, just because he could not stand the 
way Allegoo wept for her two boys. It was 
nine months since they had disappeared and, 
though he never admitted it, Aivick had at last 
given them up for lost. There was so much 
that could happen to two boys adrift on an ice- 
floe. For the thousandth time the big man 
wondered whether he had not often been too 
cross with Cunayou, even though the fat boy 
seemed to care for nothing but play. And 

242 


BROTHER ESKIMO 243 

just as his thoughts were getting very hard to 
bear, one of the dogs put his muzzle into the 
air and began to yelp excitedly. The next 
instant the whole team had joined in. 

Aivick stared around. There was nothing 
in sight except a low pressure ridge to the 
south. But it was toward this that the dogs 
were straining, so he drove on carefully, 
keeping tight hold of the walrus-hide rope 
that trailed from the end of the sledge. Then, 
drawing nearer the ridge, he saw something 
move as though a small snow-drift had been 
stood up on end. At that the dogs went alto- 
gether crazy. 

Now, Aivick had not come out to hunt bear, 
though of course his spear was on the sledge, 
but something of the dogs’ excitement got into 
his brain and because he was feeling lonely 
and unhappy he felt also reckless and suddenly 
decided to try it, even if the thing had to be 
done alone. So he loosed the team, which tore 
on in a frenzy of barking, and, picking up his 
spear, advanced with an utter lack of his usual 
caution. 


244 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


' The bear was a big one, and, since it was 
January, he was lean and very hungry. Ai- 
vick noted his height as he sat up to meet the 
dogs, and decided it was the biggest bear he 
had ever seen, with long forearms and broad 
white paws from which the curving claws 
stuck out like great talons. The team, too, 
seemed impressed with his size and strength, 
for they approached very gingerly, their teeth 
bared, the hair on their backs standing straight 
up. 

So the fierce game began, with Aivick 
waiting tensely for his chance, his spear held 
level, while the dogs snapped at the great 
brute’s side and flanks, dodging back like 
lightning with a mouthful of fur and skin. 
The mighty arms swung great blows and the 
small pink eyes were alight with anger, but, 
however the dogs worried, the big beast knew 
that his most deadly enemy stood straight in 
front of him with the long, bright-pointed 
thing in his hands. Presently the leader of 
the pack swerved just a fraction too late and 
went flying through the air with all her ribs 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


245 


broken, — a mere wreck of a dog. This enemy 
out of the way, the bear decided to end the 
thing, and, regardless of the sharp teeth that 
tortured him, coughed deep down in his white 
throat and lurched straight forward at the 
hunter. 

Aivick took a deep breath, sank on one knee, 
and, dropping the butt of his spear into a 
little hole in the ice, slanted it forward so that 
the sharp head took his quarry under the left 
fore arm and sank deep, but such was the 
weight of the great brute that the spear splin- 
tered and left him with the shattered butt 
still in his grip. Over him towered the bear, 
with blood spurting out on the white fur. 
Simultaneously the hunter turned and fled, 
hearing as he ran the yelps of his battling pack, 
and at that it seemed that three gray wolves 
raced round the end of the pressure ridge and 
hurled themselves into the combat with such 
savageness that the lord of the North' was 
forced to turn in renewed torture to face them. 
And then, marvelous to tell, there appeared 
another hunter in strange clothes which Aivick 


246 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


did not know, who, seizing his opportunity, 
thrust his spear so strongly into the bear’s side 
that the great creature’s life ran out in a crim- 
son flood through his mouth and he toppled 
over, twitching and harmless, amongst his 
enemies. And the next thing Aivick knew 
was that this hunter had been mysteriously 
joined by another, much smaller and fatter, 
and both were rubbing their faces against his 
own and calling him by his name, while his 
team walked round on their toes and growled 
at three gray wolves that had dropped from 
nowhere. 

Such was the home-coming of the wanderers, 
and it had turned out better than they had ever 
dreamed it could. What Aivick felt and said, 
it is better not to try to tell; for if you find 
two sons you have thought were lost, and one 
of them saves your life at the same moment, 
your thoughts and feelings are just the same as 
those of any father, whether he is an Island 
Eskimo or lives in Boston. But it is worth 
while stating that as Aivick and Keleepeles 
were both good hunters they set about skinning 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


247 


the bear before he froze stiff, and cutting up 
such parts of him as were fit to eat, — and there 
were not many. And while they were doing 
this, Cunayou was kept busy making peace 
between his young wolves and his father’s 
team, for they were longing to spring at one 
another’s throats. 

Picture the fat boy an hour later as he drives 
his beloved beasts up to the egg-shell igloo. 
Inside, is Allegoo, not dreaming of what has 
happened. The tears are running down Cu- 
nayou’s face, for this is the precious moment 
he has so long looked forward to. Crawl into 
the igloo at his heels and hear the little cry 
when Allegoo sees him in the half-light of her 
home, and then leave them for a while till there 
have been said a few of the many things that 
are said on such rare occasions. For this is 
the business of Aivick and his family, and it 
is naturally private. 

It was after they had all eaten some half- 
frozen fish that the boys brought out their 
presents, and while Allegoo was delighted with 
the furs, she seemed to love Cunayou’s draw- 


248 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


ings and carvings better. She was, too, im- 
pressed by the way in which Keleepeles treated 
his younger brother. At the story of Keepatis 
her eyes grew very soft and she stroked Cu- 
nayou’s cheek just as the old woman had done; 
only her hands were smooth and oily and soft. 
Then other hunters and their families came in, 
when the story, or at least part of it, had to be 
told all over; and this went on nearly all night 
till Cunayou, after going out to see his team, 
crawled up on the sleeping-ledge and shut his 
eyes. But, try as he would, he could not rest. 

“Put your hands on your stomach and 
sleep,” said Keleepeles, who had begun another 
meal. 

“My stomach and heart and head have all 
run together. I cannot sleep,” answered a 
small, tired voice. 

“He is so full of great weariness that it is 
sickness,” sad Allegioo, anxiously. “What 
shall we do?” 

Keleepeles pondered a moment. “Wait, 
and I shall try.” 

He crawled out, and presently came back, 


BROTHER ESKIMO 


249 


dragging the gray leader of Cunayou’s team. 
Lifting the young wolf in his arms he dropped 
him beside the restless boy. Came a laugh, 
then a small brown hand crept out to be laid 
caressingly on the lean head, and after that 
silence, — broken only by a gentle snore that 
sounded exactly like a ptarmigan’s whistle. 
















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